Genrekino at the Berlinale: myths, fairy tales and blood

Cattet and Forzani created a tribute to the agent cinema of the 1960s when the superheroes of the Cold War still led a jet set existence on the Riviera. With their film, however, they refer to the second set of men (and women) with the license to kill; At that time, the bond boom produced an entire subgenre of cheap agent film rip-offs in Italy and Spain; Also a profitable groschen novel culture.

With “Reflection in A Dead Diamond”, the dirty genre cinema debut in this year’s competition, but in its most stylized form – to match the retrospective “game, weird, bloody”. The predecessor “Let the Corpses Tan” (2017) was a collage from the lowlands of the European genre cinema. Cattet and Forzani rimmed the gangster film in the spirit of Tarantinos as bloody Italo western. After a successful attack, cigarilla -like revolves hide in a lonely hut, but greed and distrust drive a wedge between the men.

Trust in the power of the pictures

That was still a relatively straightforward action thriller, but the meta levels bloom in “Reflection in A Dead Diamond”. The aging John D (the Italian B-Movie icon Fabio Testi) spends his retirement on the terrace of a luxury hotel on the Côte d’Azur and mourns better times. They are gradually manifested in a wild pasty of memories, fantasies and comic outbreaks, in the past, present and delirium. Is the mysterious woman in the room next door really his deadly nemesis? Or will the old man only fantasize about the main actor in his inner agent film?

“Reflection in A Dead Diamond” sets a different tone in competition; The whole thing is pretty crazy, with ideas (and blood fountains) for two films-and a great Giallo soundtrack (including Ennio Morricone). The boundaries of reality, film and fairy tales (instead of comic fields) also blur in the new film by the French director Lucile Hadžihalilović (“Earwig”), which is a welcome newcomer to the Berlinale family. Hadžihalilović’s cinema also relies on the power of the pictures.

The story of “The Ice Tower” remains approximate and finally opens up in the fairytale. The young Jeanne (Clara Pacini) tears out of the orphanage and finds shelter on a film set that is dominated by the film diva and “snow queen” actress Cristina (Marion Cotillard). The girl is fascinated by the aura of the star and sneaks up as a porter. But the relationship between the two emotionally disoriented women takes a turn into toxic. And nightmare.

Hadžihalilović ‘decelerated mood images are always anchored in concrete objects – such as the glass teeth in “Earwig” – they become the starting point of their labyrinthic stories. In “The Ice Tower” it is a crystal that Jeanne steals from the Queen’s dress: Unfortunately, her story does not find out from the course of fairytale motifs this time. Where at Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani the fatal diamonds seductively sparkle in the glaring light of the sun, the bloody crystal of the queen looks strangely blunt. The world breaks kaleidoscope in its structure, but remains fragment.