Review: A mesmerizing Marion Cotillard reigns over Lucile Hadžihalilovic's "The Ice Tower"

by Cláudio Alves

The Ice Tower starts in the fashion of a trance-like fairytale, pulling you in through visions of refracted light, a snow globe landscape deconstructed by optical illusion. In the background, music twinkles, practically glistens as if singing the song one imagines a bauble would if it had a voice. And speaking of voices, a mellifluous woman sounds off, narrating and enchanting, beckoning closer in tones that feel like freshly fallen snow on a flushed cheek. It's Marion Cotillard, yet unseen but already magnetic as the Snow Queen and the actress who breathes life into her, a double role in a backstage melodrama with a Freudian spin.

Lucile Hadžihalilovic, one of contemporary cinema's most underrated masters, reunites with Cotillard, 21 years after Innocence, for a film that's both a free adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen's classic story and its echo...

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TIFF 50: A star is born in "The Little Sister"

by Cláudio Alves

Like The Sun Rises on Us All in Venice, The Little Sister suffered quite a bit of backlash after its lead actress won Cannes' highest honor. And like Xin Zhilei, Nadia Melliti is an eminently deserving victor, unfairly maligned by the online badmouthing and stan nonsense that reached a boiling point as Jennifer Lawrence left the Croisette empty-handed. Indeed, hers is one of the year's most captivating performances, a complex and tender portrait that feels all the more special when one remembers this was Melliti's debut. As she did in previous efforts behind the camera, Hafsia Herzi has proven herself prodigious at directing actors, turning The Little Sister into a must-watch for anyone who values such artistry and the wonders of character-based drama…

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TIFF 50: “Couture” reflects on fashion, bodies and mortality

by Cláudio Alves

In Alice Winocour's Couture, Angeline Jolie enters the film in a rush, already late and running. She plays Maxine Walker, an American director famous for her work in horror, who has been recently hired by one of those legendary French fashion houses to create a short film that will play alongside their new haute couture collection at Paris Fashion Week. She's there to work with the highest budget of her career, pumping out a vampire fantasy in a couple of days as the rest of the French capital prepares for the runway shows. At the top of the world, she's still struggling, burdened by doubts from higher-ups, a stifling schedule, and confusing calls from physicians back home. Those last ones are so insistent that she ends up leaving the shoot for an emergency appointment…

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TIFF 50: A Linklater Double Feature

by Cláudio Alves

Nowadays, if you're not named Hong Sang-soo, it's rare for a director to release multiple features in the same year. Rarer still for these projects to land on the main competition of two of the big three European film festivals, even winning an award when all is said and done. Well, that was the case this year for Richard Linklater, who bowed Blue Moon at Berlin and then took Nouvelle Vague to Cannes. Now, as happens with various of those fests' juiciest prospects, they are also playing at TIFF, where I had the luck to experience them back to back, finishing the day with a good old-fashioned double feature. Unfortunately, it's an unbalanced pair formed by one of the most disposable follies in the director's career and a gem seemingly composed to be seen as a minor work, that nevertheless sings the song of a major achievement…

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TIFF 50: Théodore Pellerin delivers a career-best performance in “Nino”

by Cláudio Alves

When describing new films, there's often the temptation to force analogies with past, unrelated works. It's an understandable impulse, akin to shorthand that tends to convey ideas that would otherwise require much more effort to articulate and may not be as clear when all is said and done. In other words, comparisons as such are a crutch for the film critic, verging on cliché. They are also really useful and, at times, almost impossible to avoid. Consider Nino, Pauline Loquès's feature debut, which follows a young Parisian as he reels from a cancer diagnosis and the need to bank some of his sperm if he ever wishes to have biological children. He has three days to make that decision, as he must start treatment by the beginning of next week. So… a genderbent take on Varda's Cléo from 5 to 7 that might as well be titled Nino from Friday to Monday? Yes and no…

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