Where to Watch Reflection in A Dead Diamond
Visual mad geniuses Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani return with their newest cinematic head-trip Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un Diamant Mort), a 1960s inspired spy caper with a leather clad femme fatale and a wildly inventive puzzle box narrative. Horror fans will no doubt remember Cattet & Forzani’s “O is for Orgasm” segment in The ABCs of Death (2012) for all its trippy imagery and unnerving close-ups, but it’s in their feature films where the duo’s style has ingeniously re-imagined some of your favorite subgenres.
The French filmmaking team’s earliest features, Amer (2009) and The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (L’Etrange Couleur des Larmes de ton Corps, 2013), both played in a Giallo sandbox where the real horrors are psychological and black leather-gloved killers reign supreme. In 2017 they released their neo-western gunslinger showdown Let The Corpses Tan (Laissez Bronzer les Cadavres), and this year they return with an outlandish crime thriller of espionage and insanity. Their movies are unlike anything else, and they remain two of the most intriguing artists working today. If you have been craving something new, something you’ve maybe never seen before, Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani are about to become your new late-night obsession. Their movies feel beamed in from another planet that only specializes in hand-crafted, bespoke cinematic madness.
“Like a James Bond movie written by Quetin Dupieux for David Lynch to direct.”
Like a James Bond movie written by Quetin Dupieux (Rubber) for David Lynch to direct, Reflection in a Dead Diamond is unpredictable and absurd and governed by a dreamy surrealistic logic where reality bends and breaks at will. It’s maybe a little obvious to say that the movie peels away like an onion because it reveals layer after layer of increasingly bizarre set pieces, but it’s totally appropriate because there is also a character impossibly buried in endless layers of fake masks and rubber skins. Imagine is Tom Cruise peeled of a face in Mission Impossible to revel his true identity but then scratched away another to reveal he was a rival agent, only to rip off a third mask where it’s discovered that his REAL identity was Marion Cottillard, and so on, and so on, and so on. You won’t believe the layers this move has.
At its core, Reflection in a Dead Diamond follows an aging intelligence agent (played by both Fabio Testi & Yannick Renier) spending his retirement in a beachside hotel, spying on attractive guests and reminiscing about old adventures. One case in particular still haunts him, and the sun-soaked locale bubbles a lifetime of forgotten emotions and memory to the surface. Flipping back and forth through each timeline (sometimes in split screen!), we revisit the case that changed everything, and how the aftermath still ripples through his life today. Along the way we also get an art-obsessed serial killer, a ghost girlfriend, death by foosball table, ninja sword fights, trippy kaleidoscope cinematography, and a dude who gets his d*ck ripped off by an assassin with razor blades for fingernails. It’s a WILD ride. And we’re only scratching the surface here.
I really can’t stress just how brilliantly bizarre and unrestrained this dang movie is. It’s got such personality, and every frame is loaded with truck load of clever ideas. Colour gels, camera angles, crash zooms, double-exposure shots- it’s a treasure trove of creativity (not to mention gory gags) and it all comes at you at 100 miles an hour.
Some movies have a few quirky moments and a handful of cool ideas but Reflection in A Dead Diamond is a torrential downpour of first-class film fun. There is no wasted space, and every second of screen time is used to show you something you haven’t seen anywhere else. It’s surreal, it’s silly, and thanks to all the genre trappings of a conventional spy thriller, Reflection in A Dead Diamond is one of the most entertaining (and secretly one of the most experimental) films of the year.
Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un Diamant Mort) is available to stream on Shudder now! Let us know what you thought of this high-flying wire act of spy shenanigans and psychological spiraling over in the Nightmare on Film Street Discord. Social Media is A Cesspool. Come Hang Where All The Cool Creeps Are.
Where to Watch Reflection in A Dead Diamond
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