‘Reflection in a Dead Diamond’ Review: Style Reigns Over Substance in Dizzying Giallo-Inspired Thriller
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From The Neon Demon (2016) to In Fabric (2018), the enduring stylistic influence of the Giallo genre can still be sensed alive and well in contemporary cinema. Born out of traditions of Italian storytelling (both in literature and cinema) from the 1960s and 1970s, Giallo inclinations typically follow uncertain characters embroiled in violent criminal worlds, featuring twisty circumstances marked by psychosexual undertones.
For their latest movie, Reflection in a Dead Diamond, which premiered earlier this year in Competition at the Berlin Film Festival, filmmaking duo and married couple Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani fully lean into their fancy for Giallo cinema (notably, not for the first time in their career) to deliver a work packed to the brim with stylistic flourish, although drastically detouring from any sense of satisfying narrative coherence in the process.
Fabio Testi (a veteran of 1970s European cinema, including a handful of Giallo movies) stars in Reflection in a Dead Diamond as John Dimas, a septuagenarian ex-secret agent living out his final years at a lavish hotel on the Côte d’Azur, replete with seaside cocktails and alluring bikini-clad vacationers to oggle. However, John’s seemingly serene retired life is just an illusion, one of the film’s many exhausting ones: he is behind on his hotel payments and sent into a downward spiral of his own memories when a young woman goes missing from the room next door.
Drifting in and out of John’s memory, the audience witnesses the situations that shaped his early career as a covert operator, with Belgian hunk Yannick Renier playing the younger version. John’s thoughts remain wrapped up with a particular failure from his past: years before, at the very same hotel, he was tasked with protecting a billionaire oil tycoon, who died at the hands of John’s arch rival, the femme fatale, Serpentik.
Serpentik, clad with many disguises that cling just as tightly to her svelte figure as the black latex body suit she wears, becomes John’s most powerful adversary, thanks to her aptitude for vicious combat and irrepressible feminine energy. His mission to take her out becomes his sole purpose, even if John’s attraction to Serpentik threatens to be his ruination.
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Does this all make sense? If so, it might not do the film justice, because as it moves forward, Reflection in a Dead Diamond becomes increasingly less interested in exploring any sense of narrative integrity. Through their previous works, such as The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013) and Let the Corpses Tan (2017), Cattet and Forzani have proven their voracious adoration of Euro-Pulp cinema, a sentiment expressed in every frame and passing character in their latest movie. Yet, these film nerd sensibilities can only earn the duo so many brownie points as Reflection in a Dead Diamond treads further into nonsensical imagery: all style, little substance.
Kudos must go to cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, whose efforts contribute to the movie’s most interesting facets. Shot on the Mediterranean coast, every scene shimmers under the blazing sun, adding a much-needed sensuality to dialogue scenes that are often directed with an off-putting hollowness. What feels most inspired about the film are its saucy, over-the-top stylistic choices, oscillating between seduction and violence from frame to frame.
Admittedly, the audiences who will most appreciate Reflection in a Dead Diamond are those who have a better understanding of its inspiration than I do. This film exists entirely within a referential world to which I have little connection, which is why I felt so alienated viewing it. While I could appreciate many of its references to classic James Bond movies (lethal Paco Rabanne sequin dresses, convertibles with built-in machine guns, gorgeous yachts galore), the nods to Italian comics from the 1960s (Diabolik in particular) would have gone entirely over my head without the aid of press notes. Giallo aficionados will undoubtedly take away much more from the movie than I did.
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While Reflection in a Dead Diamond is a visually sumptuous film, too caught up in its own fixations to deliver anything narratively compelling, its peculiarity will likely be well received by die-hard horror fans, whose increasing enthusiasm for the genre continues to uphold a large population of contemporary cinema-goers worldwide.
2/5
2025 / 87 minutes / Color / in English/French/Italian
‘Reflection of a Dead Diamond’ world premiered in Competition at the 2025 Berlin Film Festival. Shudder will theatrically distribute ‘Reflection of a Dead Diamond’ in the United States beginning on November 21, before the movie hits the streaming platform on December 5.