In 2019’s Harpoon, writer/director Rob Grant made a tense, violent, often hilarious horror movie that I called “a gory, savage black comedy potboiler” about three friends trapped on a boat and coming unraveled. For his next trick, he tackles something equally harrowing and metaphorically equivalent to being lost adrift at sea: adolescence. This Too Shall Pass is a funny, bittersweet, messy story of a time that’s, well, funny, bittersweet, and messy, even if the delivery system is at times a nostalgia overload.
When 15-year-old orphan runaway Jeanne (Clara Pacini) breaks into a theater to sleep for the night, she discovers the building is being used to film an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, which just so happens to be her favorite fairy tale. As she insinuates herself into production, she falls under the thrall of Cristina (Marion Cotillard), the film’s demanding, enigmatic diva, and the two develop a mutual, deepening obsession. So goes The Ice Tower, the new film from Evolution and Earwig director, Lucile Hadzihalilovic.
