Something to watch tonight: Friday 12 December

GUEST POST: Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un diamant mort, Cattet et Forzani, 2025)

Editor’s Note

I’m delighted to be able to hand today’s recom­mend­a­tion to cur­rent sub­scriber (and tem­por­ary flat­mate) Doug Dillaman, whose writ­ing about cul­ture you can find at Making Things Better and Letterboxd.

Doug made Gut Instinct which we recom­men­ded here in August.

We both watched Reflection in a Dead Diamond the oth­er night and, while I was in the “utterly baffled” camp, Doug made some typ­ic­ally canny obser­va­tions so I asked him to write them up for us here:

Do you like James Bond title sequences? Would you like an entire film shot like one, with all the cine­mat­ic ima­gin­a­tion and ver­ti­gin­ous leaps of logic impli­cit in that descrip­tion? Reflection in a Dead Diamond offers that – and so much more.

This is the fourth feature-length trans­mis­sion from the minds of Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. Their first two films mined the recesses of Italian hor­ror, instantly demon­strat­ing a com­mit­ment to rest­lessly invent­ive visu­als whilst pla­cing nar­rat­ive and char­ac­ter firmly in the back­ground, pos­sibly in a locked base­ment in a neigh­bour­ing villa. I saw their debut Amer at NZIFF, in 2010 and an angry genre fan declared to me after­wards, “That doesn’t belong in a film fest­iv­al! That belongs in a gal­lery!” And I half-agree: every last shot in any Cattet/Forzani, lensed on grainy beau­ti­ful super-16mm film, is giv­en as much love as a paint­er gives a painting.

Ignoring the haters, NZIFF brought the couple here in 2017 for Let The Corpses Tan, in which they rein­vig­or­ated the west­ern and delivered their punchi­est nar­rat­ive and most access­ible film yet. (I was lucky enough to host 2 Q&As with them, where they revealed them­selves to be a nor­mal happy couple who, like vir­tu­ally no oth­er happy couple in the world, had their first date at a Gaspar Noé film.) Their announce­ment that their next film would enter the world of Eurospy thrillers (like Danger: Diabolik, recently screened at Wellington’s Roxy cinema) seemed to prom­ise a fur­ther step towards the mainstream.

Nah.

Reflection in a Dead Diamond is told from the point of view of an aged man (84-year old genre icon Fabio Testi) liv­ing at a sea­side resort, who catches sight of a dia­mond nipple ring on a bare-chested sun­bather. (Far from the last nud­ity you’ll see.) This promptly pro­duces a kal­eido­scop­ic rev­er­ie of what may or may not be his pre­vi­ous adven­tures as a secret agent. Over the course of the film, these memor­ies ripple into his present life. Is his pre­vi­ous nemes­is back on his trail? Is demen­tia catch­ing up to him? Can he pay his bar tab? Is all of this sec­ond­ary in a film that is designed to send us dizzily spin­ning through the world’s most allur­ing hall of mirrors?

Possibly my favour­ite film of the year, Reflection in a Dead Diamond can­nily cri­tiques genre tropes while tak­ing super­lat­ive style to new heights. It left me with a huge smile on my face about 95% of the time. (A fair bit of the remain­ing 5% was devoted to flinch­ing at some quite impact­ful moments of viol­ence, the only thing that seems to have earned this film a berth on horror-centric stream­er Shudder1. But any Eurospy film – espe­cially one that can be com­pared to Last Year at Marienbad and Adaptation, fur­ther con­fused by a prot­ag­on­ist in cog­nit­ive decline – might intim­id­ate those who aren’t steeped in European genre cinema and don’t know fumetti2 from fusil­li.

I say: give it a try. Turn it off after ten minutes if you hate it – it’s just going to keep doing what it’s doing, more or less – but oth­er­wise, enjoy the ride. And if you feel bewildered, just ima­gine you’re in an art gallery.

Where to watch Reflection in a Dead Diamond

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Aotearoa, Australia, Canada & USA: Streaming on Shudder/AMC+

Ireland & UK: Streaming on Shudder

India: Not cur­rently avail­able online