Shudder will exclusively stream Reflection in a Dead Diamond (Reflet dans un diamant mort), the latest from Belgian filmmaking duo Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani. A visually sumptuous spy thriller, the film stars Golden Globe-winning Italian actor Fabio Testi (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis), alongside Yannick Renier, Koen De Bouw, Maria De Medeiros, Céline Camara, and introduces newcomer Thi Mai Nguyen.
The film made its debut in competition at the Berlin International Film Festival before heading to Fantastic Fest and Tribeca, where critics lauded it as a fearless reinvention of the giallo and Euro-thriller, drenched in style, suspense, and a deliciously perverse sense of fun.
The idea for Reflection in a Dead Diamond began in 2010, according to the directors:
“It all started when we saw Monte Hellman’s Road to Nowhere in 2010, starring Fabio Testi. He reminded us of Sean Connery, and was wearing a white suit that reminded us of Dirk Bogarde in Visconti’s Death in Venice. That’s when we said to ourselves: ‘But why not create a universe mixing James Bond with Death in Venice, two antithetical cinemas, and see what happens?’ Over the years, the exhibitions we’ve seen, the world we live in, the places we know, etc., have nourished this universe… Finally, Christophe Honoré’s staging of the opera La Tosca and his unconventional approach to a great classic finally gave us the impetus to write.”
Set against the sun-soaked Côte d’Azur, Reflection in a Dead Diamond follows a 70-year-old ex-spy whose quiet existence in a luxury hotel is shattered when the mysterious woman in the neighbouring room disappears. As he confronts the ghosts of a lurid past, the story twists through a labyrinth of memory, madness, and cinematic spectacle.
Beatrice Loayza of The New York Times called it “a dizzyingly inventive spy thriller… layering the past and the present with a dynamic editing style and lurid, sensorial images. The film is a Eurotrash spin on James Bond, inflected by vintage Italian comic book stylings — an illusionistic tour de force, constantly finding new and surprising ways to convey action.”
With its heady mix of style and suspense, Cattet and Forzani’s latest promises a hypnotic, unmissable experience when Reflection in a Dead Diamond arrives exclusively on Shudder on Friday, 5 December.
