The Ice Tower 2025 Parents Guide

Movie Review – The Ice Tower (2025)

Few directors get saddled with the curse of being called “the next Steven Spielberg,” and fewer still manage to make the comparison feel justified without collapsing under its weight. Lucile Hadžihalilović, though, might be the rare exception. Not because she imitates anyone she doesn’t need to but because she forges her own peculiar path, one steeped in surreal atmospherics and strange beauty. Her films don’t resemble homages so much as dispatches from another dimension. And her latest, The Ice Tower, is no different: a hypnotic mood piece that could be summarized in a handful of sentences but invites hours of contemplation once its oddities start working under your skin.

Jeanne Meets the Queen

Set in the 1970s, the story follows 16-year-old Jeanne (newcomer Clara Pacini), who slips away from her mountain children’s home and descends into a frozen valley below. While searching for shelter, she stumbles onto a movie set and into another world entirely. That’s where she first encounters Cristina (Marion Cotillard), an aloof starlet playing the title role in a film adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen.

Cristina, draped in a shimmering gown and jeweled crown, radiates the kind of allure only movie stars can conjure cold, magnetic, untouchable. Jeanne is instantly bewitched, as are we. She finagles her way into a small part as an extra, simply to orbit closer to this dazzling figure.

“The queen is so demanding,” Cristina sighs at one point, “a real monster.” Cotillard, ever chameleonic, gives a performance that operates on two levels: actress and monarch, mortal and myth. She’s been more emotionally raw elsewhere, but she’s rarely been this enigmatic. And as Cristina’s identity begins to blur with that of her icy alter ego, the film itself slips deeper into the contours of a fairy tale. The Snow Queen, we’re told, demands sacrifice from those who love her. So does The Ice Tower. It asks for your full surrender not just your time but your attention, your patience, your willingness to be lulled into its chilly spell. For many, its deliberate (yes, glacial) pace will be a dealbreaker. For others, that’s precisely the point.

Shadows, Surrogates, and Spellwork

For Jeanne, Cristina’s attention is more than enough. The girl sees in her idol a fractured mirror part aspirational figure, part mother substitute, with a sliver of something more erotic threading between. You could write an entire Freudian essay about the psychosexual tension in their bond. Think of Mulholland Drive’s Betty and Rita, then throw in some Hitchcock by way of the film-within-a-film director none other than Gaspar Noé, Hadžihalilović’s real-life partner, cheekily casting himself as the maestro of menace.

Noé’s production features Hitchcockian flourishes both overt and sly including a crow that repeatedly terrorizes whichever poor stand-in gets paired with it. Jeanne, naturally, isn’t spared. Her attempts to win Cristina’s affection often put her body and mind at risk, each encounter pushing her deeper into a dream logic that refuses to resolve.

There’s no return to the safety of the orphanage, no breadcrumb trail leading back to normalcy. Late-night wanderings through abandoned sets feel less like trespassing and more like slipping into another plane of existence a fairy tale realm that’s seductive but perilous. Even the jagged, snowbound mountains looming in the distance suggest both menace and invitation. And isn’t that exactly what the film is: forbidding yet strangely irresistible?

The Hadžihalilović Effect

Hadžihalilović is a singular presence in cinema today, operating on a wavelength no one else seems to occupy. Her work bewilders as often as it enchants, but that’s part of the spell. Earwig (2021) offered the haunting image of a young girl with teeth made of ice; Evolution (2015) blurred the boundaries of art-house horror into something unclassifiable. By contrast, The Ice Tower could not exist in anyone else’s filmography. It feels entirely at home in hers especially since it reunites her with Cotillard, who last appeared in her 2004 debut Innocence.

And yes, the tightrope is real. This is the kind of cinema that can veer perilously close to pretentious, where atmosphere risks curdling into tedium. But Hadžihalilović’s touch is too assured, her vision too crystalline, to let the film slip. The Ice Tower may test your patience, but when it lands, it glistens like a shard of frost sharp, hypnotic, and just a little dangerous.

The Ice Tower 2025 Parents Guide

Violence & Gore: Expect some ominous tension more than straight-up body horror but yes, there is violence and it lands with a cold edge. There’s a crow (yes, a bird) that attacks stand-ins on set nasty little surprises that can startle. Scenes feel claustrophobic, dreamlike, often suggesting menace more than showing “splatter.” So you’ll sense danger lurking in shadows. No full-on massacres, but emotional threat and psychological peril are constant. Young Jeanne gets put through the wringer physically, mentally (some sequences push her toward hurt or breakdown).

Language: Improbably tame (or at least discreet) in terms of profanity IMDb lists Profanity as present but not pervasive. Don’t expect characters dropping “F-bombs” every other sentence. The language is minimal, atmospheric, not gratuitous. Stronger than a “PG whisper,” but softer than anything rated for full adult slobs.

Sexual Content: The tone is charged obsession, idolization, and a creepily emotional bond between Jeanne and Cristina. Nudity is subtle or implied; nothing gratuitous or in-your-face (no “Here’s full nudity for shock’s sake” moments listed). The relationship skims at psychosexual undertones. It’s not PG-13 kissiness more a slow burn of fascination, closeness, emotional dependency, and maybe jealousy.

No explicit sexual acts; the film leans on suggestion, glances, proximity, and tension.

Substance Use / Drugs & Smoking: “Alcohol, Drugs & Smoking” as present (1 out of categories). You might see someone take a drink, a cigarette or two, or a set-life cocktail; nothing that drives a subplot or gets moralistic about it. No major drug abuse sequences, no hardcore addiction arcs.

Conclusion

You’re not going to hand The Ice Tower to a tween and call it “just a fairy tale with snow.” This is a haunting, dreamlike descent into obsession, fragility, and identity. The violence is mostly psychological, the sexual tension slow-burn, the language polite but precise. Nothing blunt, everything insinuated.

So: if you’re okay with your kid witnessing emotional strain, quiet menace, and ethereal sensuality fine. But if their threshold for “creepy vibes” is low, maybe warn them: this is not a snow-globe bedtime story.

If you want, I can also draft a “Suggested Minimum Age” with context and why I’d draw the line where I do. Want me to pick one (say, 14+, 16+, etc.)?