The Brussels-based French filmmaker couple, Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, pay homage to 60s spy pulp fiction in their latest release, Reflection In A Dead Diamond. With limited dialogue, the image becomes the sole focus of the film. Almost every frame in this avant-garde spy thriller is meticulously planned and aims to provoke the audience. The non-linear narrative shifts to and fro between the protagonist’s past and present. The film isn’t meant to be coherent; it’s a visual experience that you must essentially not attempt to derive meaning from. There is a loose storyline, but honestly there are way too many sequences that don’t add any meaning to the plot or advance the storyline; they exist simply for shock and gags. Reflection In A Dead Diamond succeeds in delivering an out-of-the-box experience with visuals that’ll stay with you, although a compelling narrative would’ve made it thoroughly memorable.
Spoiler Alert
What is the film about?
John Diman, a retired spy in his 70s, preferred spending every morning in the French Riviera sipping cosmos and watching the waves crash at the shore. One morning, a beautiful young woman (who also happened to be staying in the room next to his at the hotel) in a red bikini caught his attention. As he admired her beauty, he was immediately reminded of his fair share of adventures as a young spy when his eyes met her diamond nipple studs. There is a certain obsession with diamonds in the film, and that is not completely shocking considering how so many spy thrillers are often about stolen jewels! John, a government spy, was appointed to protect Markus Strand, a prominent name in the oil business, but things got a bit messy when Strand murdered John’s partner. He used the bodies of his victims to create art pieces. He coated them with petroleum, used their bodies to make strokes on canvas, and burned them to death when he was done. His partner had a suit that recorded the entire incident, and that was how John found out about her death. While it seemed John would be inclined to seek revenge for his partner, he got distracted when Serpentik showed up. Serpentik was John’s arch-nemesis, and she was after Markus Strand. John had been chasing Serpentik, but he’d failed to track her down. No one knew how she looked; they only knew about her poison-tipped ‘cobra-kiss’ ring—her weapon of choice to get rid of her enemies.
Was John Diman a spy or an actor?
The twist in the tale is that there is no certainty! John Diman appeared to be a spy, but there are several instances in the film where it is implied that he might have been the actor playing the hero of a spy pulp fiction. The film-within-a-film possibility further adds a layer of intrigue to the narrative as a whole. If we consider that he was the actor who played the spy, then it’s safe to assume that he’d grown obsessed with the character. Since Serpentik was the ultimate villain, presumably, the film production had decided that the actor playing the notorious character would not be formally introduced to John. What was possibly done to keep things realistic and interesting resulted in John’s obsession with finding out who was behind the mask. Just like the character he played on-screen, he couldn’t keep his mind off Serpentik. The film sways between the possibilities of John being an actor and a spy in real life. There is a certain fluidity to the possibilities, and it is almost interchangeably implied. The character, Serpentik, wore skin-like masks, making it impossible to tell her real identity. Whenever John came across or shared the screen with the actor playing Serpentik, she was in a black suit and had her face covered. Although it is not clarified in the film, it’s not too far-fetched to assume that maybe John was replaced by another actor after his obsession with Serpentik started to disrupt the shooting altogether. John watched another actor play the role he had become famous for. But he had so fully soaked in the made-up world of comics that he could barely tell fiction from reality. He continued to carry with him the props that he used as a spy, and he had convinced himself that they were extremely advanced technology and must be kept away from prying eyes. The film can be interpreted as an actor’s struggle to detach himself from the heroic role he once portrayed, and he desperately tried to hold onto his belief that he was genuinely a spy. Think Pierce Brosnan (also in his 70s) acting like James Bond in the French Riviera! What is also intriguing is that the film offers an alternative conclusion—there was a criminal at large who could make their targets think that they were part of a film, and the delusion only ended when the end credits rolled. So, was John a target of this criminal? Did everything he experienced happen in an alternate reality? The film leaves enough room for speculation.
Did John solve the mystery behind Serpentik?
John was convinced that Serpentik had been following him when he came across the lifeless body of the young woman who had been staying in the room next to his. He assumed that Serpentik used her poison-tip ring to get rid of the girl (yes, she indeed died of poisoning, but that was as a result of the polluted sea that wasn’t safe for swimming). This also explains the title of the film, he saw the reflection of his past in a dead diamond, the girl he’d been recently obsessed with. When John saw a man next to the body, John thought he too was involved. John boldly attacked the man and ultimately killed him. He absolved himself of the murder, thinking that the man was evil and he was the only one who’d already figured out who was behind the untimely death of the young woman. John’s obsession with Serpentik was no longer limited to his past memories; he started searching for her all around him.
As luck would have it, there was a witness who had confessed to seeing John kill a man by the beach to the cops. The cops stormed into John’s room and went through his belongings. He was interrogated, and while he tried to explain the bigger problem, they didn’t seem to get it. He feared that while the cops were busy questioning him, Serpentik would get away with another crime. Most of John’s belongings looked dangerous at first, but they turned out to be pretty harmless. Also, the box of diamonds that he carried with pride (he’d even told the concierge that he would pay his bills in diamonds) turned out to be fake. Was it just a box of glittering stones that he bought to make his story more believable? That might just be it! There was someone on John’s team, an elderly woman who had been watching him from a distance for a few days. As it turned out, the mansion that the woman lived in was rented to shoot ‘Mission Serpentik,’ a film that John had starred in. This explains why he remembered the mansion, though all he could really recall was chasing Serpentik. In the film, the mansion belonged to Markus Strand, and it has already been established that John believed more in the fiction than the reality. So, the moment he figured that there was a connection between this woman and ‘his past,’ he was convinced that she might just be Serpentik. She had sent him ‘The Return of Serpentik’ comic and paid his bills after his health deteriorated, and John thought that was enough reason to suspect her. The woman turned out to be an admirer of the ‘John D’ comics, and she assumed they could just have a brief discussion about the film and the comics, but clearly John had other plans. He grabbed hold of the woman’s hand and ripped off her nail extensions. He attempted to choke her, but she managed to escape. A car chase followed; John thought he was back in action, and he assumed that his car had special gadgets, such as convertible headlights that acted as a weapon, but in reality, they were just regular headlights that blinked every time he pressed the button.
During Reflection In A Dead Diamond’s ending, the woman fell off a cliff; she lost control of her vehicle and was extremely anxious after being chased by John, who was clearly not in his senses. But John wasn’t sure if Serpentik had indeed died because, according to the comic book series, she survived a crash. He imagined her climbing on top of the cliff again. She got into his car, and he joined her. He had waited his entire life for this moment, to finally speak to Serpentik. But instead of a ride, Serpentik crashed the car. She removed her mask, but her hair covered her face. She pressed her poison-tipped ring into the back of his neck, and by the time John figured out what was going on, it was too late. John saw the waves crash below him before the car caught on fire. In the final scene, we witness John seated on the beach with his favorite drink, and within a few seconds, it looks like he peacefully passed away. The beach scenery soon changed into what looked like the inside of a studio, and in the final moments one might just wonder if it was all just a grand illusion. Maybe John didn’t just assume that someone was after him; maybe it was the unnamed criminal who performed kinetic hypnosis and convinced his victims that they were in a film and they would be forever in touch with reality until the words ‘The End’ rolled on screen. So did John Diman exist in reality, or was he entirely fictitious? If he was not John D—the spy, the actor, the comic book character— then who was he? Perhaps he was just a man in the audience who thought he was the hero? Is it just a fan’s obsession with cinema, just like the filmmakers who’ve been deeply inspired by spy thrillers? Well, the possibilities seem endless!
