Jeanne (in a breakout turn by newcomer Clara Pacini) is a 15-year-old girl who has been living in a foster home for years since the death of her mother. She has become something of an older sister for Rose, one of the youngest orphans in the home. She’s conflicted in feeling responsible for Rose, even as she longs to leave the foster home to find an independent life. Rose is anxious about Jeanne’s departure and—so to soothe Rose—Jeanne removes a bead from her bracelet and offers it to the little girl for safekeeping. This is the first of a series of transitional objects in the film. Transitional objects are psychologically important because they offer comfort and security, help children move from dependence to independence, provide a sense of continuity during unfamiliar situations, and act as a tool for emotional regulation, allowing children to bridge the gap between their internal world and the external environment. These familiar items soothe anxiety, build confidence, and can be a healthy, normal part of development for many children. Eventually, we learn that Jeanne acquired these beads from her mother’s corpse. They are all she has left of her mother and—by giving one of them to Rose—Jeanne is leaving a little bit of her mother to take care of the little girl.
So we have, at heart, the story of children orphaned by an absent parent—specifically in this story, a mother—and a child’s traumatized longing to find a mother in a world shaped by absence. Jeanne runs away from the foster home, nearly feral in her longing, inspired by a postcard sent to her by another orphan girl who has already made her escape. This postcard is another transitional object, praising the beauty of an ice skating rink that Jeanne uses as destination, since truly she has nowhere to go.
At the rink, her eyes wide with desire and fantasy, Jeanne admires a young woman elegantly skating. She approaches her with a compliment hoping that she might go with her to have a place to sleep, but this young woman, Bianca, says she cannot help her. Jeanne is forced then to find some place to lay her head, which she does by sneaking through a window into—unbeknownst to her—a film set where the story of the Snow Queen is being filmed, with Marion Cotillard playing Cristina, the actress portraying the Snow Queen. And here is where Hadzihalilovic begins her enchantment, layering a fairy tale on top of the making of a film about a fairy tale, blending with Jeanne’s dreams and her love for the story of the Snow Queen. Is it mere coincidence that she has stumbled onto a film set that replicates the beautiful domain of the Snow Queen? Or that the actress portraying the Snow Queen is as beautiful and aloof as Jeanne has imagined her? Or as demanding as the fairytale requires? Or that she has the name Bianca to claim as a pseudonym? Fantasy and reality have become inextricably conjoined.
In the costume department, Jeanne finds the Snow Queen’s glittering costume and steals one of its crystal ornaments. This is a new transitional object, the new way that Jeanne has come to understand the shape her mother’s absence has taken. Charmed by Jeanne’s vulnerability, the cynical Christina takes her under wing, secures her a role in the film, and finds her a place to stay, and Jeanne—infatuated with this beautiful actress portraying the Snow Queen—falls under her spell. It’s as if all she has wished for has come true. But as Stephen Sondheim has lyricized in his ode to fairy tales—"Into the Woods”—wishes come true, not free. The safety that Jeanne feels she has found transforms into danger and the touch of a mother that she longs for arrives as cold as her true mother’s corpse.
A Jungian analyst could have a hey day interpreting the symbolism of this film and I, in fact, have attended Jungian seminars exploring the themes of both Hans Christian Andersen and Alfred Hitchcock and so can see the tip of the hat to Hitchcock’s own mother issues and how he preferred to place his icy blondes in harmful scenarios. A crow on the set of the Snow Queen film pecks at a young actress in much the same way that birds drew blood from Tippi Hedren in The Birds (1963). So along with the movie about a fairy tale, and about the making of a movie about a fairy tale, Hadzihalilovic makes a movie that pays homage to other movies; not only The Birds (1963), but another Hans Christian Andersen adaptation, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s The Red Shoes (1948), referenced by a theatrical poster on a wall.
But most beautiful, most disturbing, most resonant is Jeanne’s dream—or is it a dream? The ambiguity is delicious—where dressed as a Snow Princess, Jeanne bites the crow that threatens her, its blood smeared on her mouth. The Snow Queen advances to kiss her and her kiss removes the blood from Jeanne’s mouth. Redolent with significance, I can’t truthfully interpret what that means, but I accept it as a brilliant oneiric and filmic moment.
By film’s end, Jeanne has discovered that it is the fantasy built upon her mother’s absence that is, perhaps, what introduces the most harm in her life and that—to avoid that harm—she must let go the dream of being able to fill that absence so that she can get on with life. As a girl, she wanted to be the Snow Queen, but as a young woman she wants to be so much more.
The Ice Tower, a Yellow Veil Pictures release, opens today in limited distribution, and reaches San Francisco on October 10, 2025 at the Alamo Drafthouse New Mission.
