The guilty pleasures of Italy’s B-movies and action comic books of the Sixties are heaped on silver platters and warmed in the bright sunshine of the French Riviera in the teasingly titled Reflection in a Dead Diamond. The latest droll outing of movie violence and cult nostalgia from avant-garde French filmmakers Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani (The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears; Let the Corpses Tan) adds a splash of 007 and the shapeshifter Diabolik in a witty cocktail that is pure eye-candy to watch. But buyers beware: this cool reflection on Sixties’ spy and superhero tropes proves as elusive as a killer in a mirror, a mental conundrum questioning identity, reality, illusion and other mind-bending things that prove hard to follow or make sense of.
The bad news for Bond cultists is there is no narrative pay-off – no coherent storyline – in this tasty treat for psychiatrists, Surrealists and experimental film lovers, making the True Colours release a very niche item, but certainly a festival best-seller. It has been the boldest choice so far in Berlin competition and its crazy tilted universe is well worth sampling.
The film is a series of constructed scenes that weave back and forth over a handful of archetypal characters, who all seem just slightly off their original model. The anchor is “John Diman”, an aging man of leisure who lives in a luxury seaside hotel in solitary retirement. He is elegantly impersonated by Italian actor Fabio Testi, always attired in a white suit and hat that was, so say the filmmakers, inspired by Dirk Bogarde’s character in Death in Venice. Despite these Mediterranean associations, there is a strong suggestion that John is actually 007 in his later years: a bored old man with a lived-in face and no friends, who has difficulty paying his hotel bill. The sight of a girl in a bikini who has a diamond stud in one nipple starts the old codger down memory lane, when he was an all-powerful secret agent who drove a silver sports car with machine gun headlights and had women at his feet.
Amid a blizzard of tilted images on psychedelic backdrops, many of them women’s dismembered body parts, the youthful square-jawed face of Yannick Renier now takes center stage. He is complimented by his bosses for the brilliant conclusion of his last mission and sent out on a new one to protect a billionaire oil tycoon (suave Belgian actor Koen De Bouw) worth a fortune in diamonds. Working with him is a smart female agent (Céline Camara in an amusing send-up of a Bond girl) who uses her silver-sequined dress as a lethal weapon (this has to be seen to be believed).
But John Diman has yet another identity: that of an insecure actor who fears he is going to be replaced by a younger, tougher rival. This is nicely illustrated in a film-within-the-film moment when John straddles a woman chained to a bed and starts torturing her for information — only for the director to yell Cut! Later, in his producer’s office/the billionaire’s living room/the film set, he is dismayed to repeatedly discover an entire ad campaign for the next film in the series, starring the other actor as the spy.
The timeframe being stuck in the binary, pre-feminist days, Cattet and Forzani pile on the unnecessary violence against the women in the film, beating them up, cutting them with diamonds, tearing off their faces (to reveal new faces and identities underneath the torn skin, Mission: Impossible style.) Recurrent visual memes are a piece of a women’s mouth and a diamond-encrusted eye that turn up in unexpected places, all very dreamlike and surreal.
The killer scene involves a female Diabolik clone known as Serpentik (played by a succession of actors including the delightful Barbara Hellemans), who drives John and other men mad by refusing to tell them who she is behind her black mask and cat suit. Walking into a bar in her stiletto-heeled boots, she fearlessly takes on half a dozen armed men and a lot of punishment, always bouncing back like the cartoon character she is.
John’s climactic encounter occurs in his Fabio Testi self, who is obsessed with a villa high over the water and a mysterious blonde (Maria De Medeiros) who watches him from her terrace. Is she friend or foe? he wonders. Their final confrontation after a high-speed chase on hairpin curves over the Côte d’Azur puts a final confusing spin on the characters and the story.
Working with exceptional visual artists led by cinematographer Manu Dacosse and production designer Laurie Colson, the directors turn artistic pastiche into a fun ride through pop art, at least for those who don’t get carsick. Acclaimed comic book illustrator Emanuele Barison, who has worked for Disney and Diabolik, provides a lot of the inspiration.
Directors, screenwriters: Hélène Cattet, Bruno Forzani
Producer: Pierre Foulon
Cast: Fabio Testi, Yannick Renier, Koen De Bouw, Maria De Medeiros, Thi Mai Nguyen, Céline Camara, Kezia Quental, Sylvia Camarda, Sophie Mousel, Hervé Sogne, Manon Bleuchot
Cinematography: Manu Dacosse
Production design: Laurie Colson
Costume design: Jackye Fauconnier
Editing: Bernard Beets
Sound editing: Dan Bruylandt
Production company: Kozak Films
World sales: True Colours
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Competition)
In French, Italian, English
87 minutes
