Filmmaking duo and real-life spouses Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani have a distinct eye for imagery in their continued experiments with form, using genre frameworks to create tactile immersions into vintage exploitation cinema. The pair’s sensory explorations of Giallo with Amer and The Stranger Color of Your Body’s Tears established their signature style straightaway, while their visceral homage to Spaghetti Westerns with Let the Corpses Tan marked an evolution in their work. Cattet and Forzani’s latest, Reflection in a Dead Diamond, reconfigures the 1960s Europsy feature for a kaleidoscopic, violent vision of self-identity and fading memories.
Like Cattet and Forzani’s previous works, Reflection in a Dead Diamond is guided by intuition and cinematic stylings rather than plot. True to both its abstract nature and the Europsy features it emulates, the filmmakers’ latest begins in a disorienting fashion, with fractured pieces of storytelling scattered between dual timelines that slowly congeal into a poignant self-reflection on life lived. As for what semblance of plot there is, the nonlinear film follows superspy John Diman, both in the present as a retiree (played by legendary Fabio Testi) and in the prime of his career (Yannick Renier) as he tracks elusive adversary Serpentik, a lethal femme fatale shapeshifter of many faces.
Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik and Death in Venice heavily inform the increasingly labyrinthine corridors of Diman’s mind, one filled with endless James Bond signatures heightened to gory, Giallo-like excess. It’s here where the genre lines blur, and Reflection in a Dead Diamond begins to overlap with horror. That’s at its most noticeable whenever Serpentik takes center stage. Played primarily by Thi Mai Nguyen, alongside multiple other actresses, this leather and stiletto-clad villainess has a way of unleashing carnage everywhere she turns up.
That bloody, graphic violence serves as stunning juxtaposition to the wide array of eye-popping dissolves, hallucinatory visions, fractured memories, fantasical settings and set pieces, and sensual style. The filmmakers’ experimentation in form doesn’t just immerse audiences in John D’s heightened reality; it creates a complicated, heady web that gradually reveals a meta component. It becomes a genre deconstruction as John D begins to reflect on the expendable nature of his job, and whether that may be due to studios wanting to refresh their stale franchise. But getting at the heart of these questions can take work, especially as the plot becomes less and less relevant as the themes become more pronounced.
For all the dizzying imagery, murder, and sparkly psychedelia, Reflection in a Dead Diamond is haunted by regret. It’s that sobering melancholia of an aged man struggling to maintain his grip on reality amidst his unmooring sense of identity that adds heft and substance to an experimental throwback uninterested in conventional storytelling. While John D’s reflections on his past can fall into repetitive territory, Cattet and Forzani’s exciting experimentations make it all too easy to get swept up in their mesmerizing sensory assault, complete with music from Ennio Morricone and Fabio Frizzi.
Identities shift and refract to a mesmerizing, disorienting effect in Reflection in a Dead Diamond. High art and pulpy comics collide in a distinct vision that plunges viewers straight into the deep end, ensuring that you’ll know whether this is for you nearly straightaway. Cattet and Forzani’s strong grasp of the style of visual language is unparalleled, though, and their continued explorations of ’60s and ’70s exploitation cinema continue to impress.
Reflection in a Dead Diamond is now streaming on Shudder.
