‘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 residing prior to now, 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 components of retro movie types – 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 idea, at any charge – and there are sequences in all of the duo’s movies which might be undeniably exhilarating of their hyper-fragmented strangeness. However for lengthy stretches, the deranged virtuosity can turn into deadening overkill – and that’s the case in Reflection In A Useless Diamond, the free story of a 70-year-old man recalling his wild years on the Riviera within the Nineteen Sixties. Arguably the duo’s most full-on train to this point, this Berlin competitors title can be the movie during 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 enchantment 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 and cross-pollinate the 60s European college 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 approach that might itself be thought-about a contact Nineteen Sixties retro. What storyline there’s entails 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 essential determine named Marcus Strand (Koen de Boew), concerned with an all-important supply of power for the long run. Sinister figures are out to get rid of Marcus and John should cease them, in tandem along with his femme fatale confederate (Céline Camara), certainly one of whose lethal tips 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 machine. 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 components – that are reshuffled and replayed in a number of permutations – of a story which can’t be taken at face worth. It could be that what we’re watching is definitely an espionage film known as Mission Serpentik during which the younger John is taking part in 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 previous 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 potential for a story, whereas always refusing to let a traditional story materialise, as an alternative bombarding us with photographs. That is itself a conventional anti-narrative ploy, with the pictures repeating, distorting, rhyming, mutating all through the movie, typically to partaking impact: all through, we get variations on diamonds glistening on flesh, repeated razor/sword/ fingernail slashings of pores and skin, material, leather-based, masks. Any form of clean circulation is disrupted by freeze-frames, smash cuts, sudden inserts of drawings, photographs, shriekingly vivid colour results, whereas using sound involves resemble a form of dance music: notably in a battle during 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 dying. 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 model of Yves Klein et al. However for all its technical hyper-brio, this work feels as exhausting as a 200mph heavy metallic guitar solo, and fewer like a movie – even a extremely difficult avant-garde one – than a de luxe, disconnected storyboard for itself.