‘Reflection In A Dead Diamond’ review: Fast and frenetic movie geek nostalgia

Dir. Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani. Belgium/Luxembourg/France/Italy 2025. 87mins

Hardcore modernists dedicated to dwelling previously, Brussels-based duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have created their very own excessive type of movie language on the idea of passionate movie-geek nostalgia. Channeling and recombining parts of retro movie kinds – notably giallo horror and the 60s/70s Euro-thriller – they push the iconography of their beloved sub-genres to their furthest limits, amplified by frenzied rhythmic enhancing that pushes imagery to the sting of abstraction.

Consistently refuses to let a traditional story materialise

That’s the speculation, at any fee – and there are sequences in all of the duo’s movies which are undeniably exhilarating of their hyper-fragmented strangeness. However for lengthy stretches, the deranged virtuosity can change into deadening overkill – and that’s the case in Reflection In A Lifeless Diamond, the unfastened story of a 70-year-old man recalling his wild years on the Riviera within the Sixties. Arguably the duo’s most full-on train so far, this Berlin competitors title can be the movie through which they most appear to be repeating themselves. Area of interest retailers with a superfan constituency will embrace it, as will venues and festivals nonetheless flying the hallowed ‘midnight film’ flag, however Reflection is unlikely to attraction to audiences not already contaminated by religious cine-fetishism. 

Following two movies that recrafted giallo tropes (Amer and The Unusual Colour of Your Physique’s Tears) and 70s-style thriller Let The Corpses Tan (their most narratively coherent movie, though ‘coherence’ is relative), the duo try to cross-pollinate the 60s European faculty of sub-007 knockoffs with a register of art-house stylisation, one thing like an acid-spiked model of Alain Resnais’ temporal fragmentation – in the event you like, Final 12 months In On line casino Royale. There’s additionally a contact of the form of style subversion explored by Resnais collaborator Alain Robbe-Grillet in his glossier late work like La Belle Captive (and a few of his S&M preoccupations too).

There seems to be a story of kinds, or maybe simply the impression of 1 – as a result of Cattet and Forzani are dedicated right here to a complete demolition of linearity, in a manner that would itself be thought-about a contact Sixties retro. What storyline there’s includes an aged man named John (veteran Italian star Fabio Testi, stately) who lives in a sublime lodge on the Côte d’Azur, paying for his room with the cash from a cache of diamonds. When not eyeing younger swimsuited girls on the seashore, he muses on his youth as a suave superspy (performed by Yannick Renier).

We see the youthful John assigned to safeguard an necessary determine named Marcus Strand (Koen de Boew), concerned with an all-important supply of power for the longer term. Sinister figures are out to remove Marcus and John should cease them, in tandem together with his femme fatale confederate (Céline Camara), one among whose lethal methods is to make use of her Paco Rabanne-style mirrored costume as a weapon; in one of many movie’s ingenious touches, every spherical mirror from the garment doubles as a video recording gadget. However the duo haven’t reckoned with sinister ninja-like agent Serpentik (dancer and choreographer Thi Mai Nguyen), who appears to be not one however many ladies, and maybe (in echoes of 8 ½) all the ladies that John has ever fought, or beloved.

These are the important parts – that are reshuffled and replayed in a number of permutations – of a story which can’t be taken at face worth. It might be that what we’re watching is definitely an espionage film known as Mission Serpentik through which the younger John is enjoying a spy named ‘John’; or the evocation of a comic book strip or alternatively a photo-novel about John’s battle with Serpentik; or a non-existent film {that a} demented outdated John is ‘directing’ in his head from fragments of reminiscence and popular culture. Or all the above, or none. 

What’s important is that, from begin to end, Reflection taunts us with the opportunity of a story, whereas continually refusing to let a traditional story materialise, as an alternative bombarding us with photos. That is itself a standard anti-narrative ploy, with the pictures repeating, distorting, rhyming, mutating all through the movie, typically to participating impact: all through, we get variations on diamonds glistening on flesh, repeated razor/sword/ fingernail slashings of pores and skin, cloth, leather-based, masks. Any form of clean circulation is disrupted by freeze-frames, smash cuts, sudden inserts of drawings, photographs, shriekingly vivid coloration results, whereas using sound involves resemble a form of dance music: notably in a struggle through which Serpentik takes on a gaggle of roughs to a rhythmic orchestration of swishes, slashes and crashes. 

It’s all dazzling – extra within the sense of blinding than impressing – however there’s little modulation to it, and a few repetitions are labored to demise. Cinematographer Manu Dacosse, editor Bertrand Beets and sound editor Dan Bruylandt all do knockout work all through, as does designer Laurie Colson, working in references to interval Op Artwork in addition to the physique portray fashion of Yves Klein et al. However for all its technical hyper-brio, this work feels as exhausting as a 200mph heavy steel guitar solo, and fewer like a movie – even a very difficult avant-garde one – than a de luxe, disconnected storyboard for itself.