The Eurospy Genre Lives Again in Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet's Dazzling, Dizzying Pastiche Reflection in a Dead Diamond

REFLECTION IN A DEAD DIAMOND / Reflet dans un Diamant Mort 

(Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet, 2025, Belgium/

Luxembourg/Italy/France, 87 minutes)

Belgian filmmaking couple Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet recreate and recontextualize the imaginative Eurospy films of the 1960s and '70s–with lacings of Italian comic book and Mission: Impossible iconography–in the stylish, fast-moving action thriller Reflection in a Dead Diamond. 

The prototypical version of these films featured rugged men and glamorous women, mod outfits, bold interiors, inscrutable storylines, disorienting dubbing, and swinging scores. Forzani and Cattet's followup to 2017's horror western Let the Corpses Tan revolves around men chasing after diamonds--and each other--and the women who help or hinder their quests…before giving way to something more multi-layered and self-referential.

Over the course of their 24-year career, the duo has mastered the art of the outré assemblage through tactile closeups, multiple exposures, colored gels and filters, animated sequences, bursts of intense violence, and vivid sound design–heavy on the squeaking latex–that conjures up images of Toby Jones feverishly hacking away at produce and other squishy items in Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio. (Fittingly, Strickland voices one of the screams in The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears.) Their fourth feature film is no different. 

Further, most effects appear to be practical, which definitely adds to the appeal. There's a certain weightlessness to computer-generated effects that has always kept me at arm's length; everything in a Forzani-Cattet production, no matter how outlandish, feels palpable and weighty. 

They begin with Diman (Italian actor Fabio Testi, Monte Hellman's Road to Nowhere), a retired spy at a hotel café on the Côte d'Azur sipping a cocktail while watching a brunette beauty (Sophie Mousel) soaking up the sun. 

Throughout the film, they intercut closeups of his brown eyes, a signature Sergio Leone move (though Testi doesn't appear to have worked with the spaghetti western pioneer). It's something they've been doing since their 2009 directorial debut, Amer, so it also counts as their signature move. 

When the brunette takes off her bikini top and reclines, the sun catches a certain diamond piercing, something that never appeared in any James Bond movie, even as this one incorporates tropes associated with Sean Connery's iteration of the British spy…and that of his brother Neil, who starred in Alberto De Martino's 1967 Eurospy entry Operation Kid Brother, an inspiration Forzani has described as "very pop, very psychedelic, very fun."

Diman wears a holster and gun under his white suit jacket, a nod to Dirk Bogarde's desperately lonely composer Gustav von Aschenbach (left) in Luchino Visconti's Thomas Mann adaptation Death in Venice, and carries an attaché case filled with spy gizmos, like a silver ring with laser eye that allows him to see through walls and other surfaces. 

When the brunette, a guest at the same luxury hotel, disappears, the septuagenarian ex-spy sets out to solve the mystery. In the film, she appears to leave for a yachting excursion with John (Yannick Renier, Jérémie Renier's older brother), a handsome spy convinced she has information he needs about his client, oil baron Markus Strand (Koen De Bouw, star of the original Belgian Professor T), so he attempts to torture it out of her. 

When that gambit fails, his female associate (Céline Camara) attempts to seduce Strand while wearing a silver grill and a Paco Rabanne-style palette shift with a red jewel in the center that does interesting tricks, like dispatching a ninja crew in a sequence that reminded me of Elia Suleiman's black comedy Divine Intervention in which one Palestinian woman puts five Israeli men in their place. In this case, even the palettes have powers.

John also has one of the fancy rings, which he uses to see through a poker hand--cheater!--suggesting that he's a younger version of Diman, or that Diman is imagining all of these things. John also walks a red carpet, attends a press conference, and re-enacts the torture scene on a movie set, suggesting that his every action is staged and directed. Or that Diman, possibly suffering from dementia, can't tell the difference. Not until the end credits did I clock that John's last name is Diman, so yes, same guy, but that doesn't unlock the intentionally-ambiguous screenplay's every secret.  

In its early stages, the women in the film don't make out too well. 

Instead of the asphyxiating gold paint of Guy Hamilton's Goldfinger, one ends up coated in black oil paint--like one of Yves Klein's cobalt-clad human paintbrushes--and things only get worse from there, though everything is too stylized to qualify as misogynistic, especially once Forzani and Cattet introduce the Satanik-inspired Serpentik (mostly French-Vietnamese choreographer Thi Mai Nguyen, but sometimes Barbara Hellemans, Sylvia Camarda, or other performers), a latex-clad sphinx who obliterates a roomful of manly men with her metal talons, stiletto heels, and hook-filled extensions. 

As Forzani told Anton Bitel in 2020, "When we made our short films, in one… it was a man who was killed, in the other it was a woman. We wanted to be equal in the violence [both laugh], and in the male and female aspect."

Throughout, there's plenty of crushed glass and torn flesh–Amer used sea salt in similar ways–recalling both Lucio Fulci and Miike Takashi, though possibly more inventive than either. And that's just scratching the surface–pun intended–since there's also naked sword-fighting, murder by foosball, comic book panels that come to life, a Black opera singer (singer/actress Kezia Quental) inspired by Diva's Cynthia Hawkins--the filmmakers even include Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez's "La Wally" on the soundtrack--an eye-popping op art carpet, and Maria de Medeiros in platinum blonde hair and deep red lipstick. (Sadly, some critics have conflated Quental, also Black, with Camara, even though the two women don't look much alike.)

Forzani and Cattet have studied their gialli and fumetti neri well. 

Though the films are otherwise quite different--no zombies appear in this one--I'm also fond of Michele Soavi's 1994 fumetti neri adaptation Cemetery Man, which sprung from the pages of Italian comic book author Tiziano Sclavi's 1991 novel Dellamorte Dellamore. Sclavi's work, however, came later, unlike Mario Bava's 1968 Danger: Diabolik, an adaptation of Angela and Luciana Giussani's Diabolik series, to which Reflection in a Dead Diamond pays direct homage.  

Though few lines struck me as funny–not least because Bruno Forzani and Hélène Cattet prioritize imagery over dialogue–a number of abrupt or unexpected edits made me laugh, even as the actors always play it straight. If they never wink at the audience, the filmmakers and steadfast editor Bernard Beets do just that with their clever juxtapositions, ensuring that things never get too heavy no matter how close they dance to the edge. 

DP Manuel Dacosse, who shot all four of their features, also deserves credit for his stellar work for the duo, in addition to other strong visual stylists, like Lucile Hadžihalilović (Évolution) and François Ozon (Peter von Kant).

For those not tuned to their fantastical, fetishistic frequency, this thing will be a chore–even at 87 minutes–but for the rest: a bloody good time awaits. 

Reflection in a Dead Diamond plays SIFF Film Center on Dec 3 thanks for the fine folks at The Grand Illusion Cinema. Images from JustWatch (a pack of ninjas), the IMDb (poster for The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears), The Gay and Lesbian Review (Dirk Bogarde in Death in Venice), Rotten Tomatoes (Fabio Testi), and Melbourne International Film Festival (Céline Camara).