The Films That Inspired 'Reflection in a Dead Diamond' With Directors Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani

"Millennium Actress from Satoshi Kon, for its storytelling. Because he wrote the script like a stereoscopic way, with several layers. And each time you watch the movie, you can see it in a different way."

— Bruno Forzani, co-director

"There is 'Westworld,' the series. It's similar storytelling, inspired by Satoshi Kon. So with different layers of interpretation, you can see the movie through different angles, and you and the audience have a place in the movie ... Each viewer lives a different experience."

— Hélène Cattet, co-director

"Your interaction with Reflection in a Dead Diamond is a bit like when you read a book. And with that type of writing, it helps the the audience to have imagination and to interact and interpret the movie."

— Bruno Forzani

"The 'James Bond' in [Reflection in a Dead Diamond] is in his bubble, in his own universe, with a fake memory of his past. He doesn't know anymore what is real, what is fake. So it's a little bit like in Sunset Boulevard."

— Hélène Cattet

"Death in Venice by Visconti, because we wanted to mix two types of cinema: Art house cinema (like Death in Venice) and something more fun and popular like Euro-spy/James Bond for something very pychedelic."

— Bruno Forzani

"We were also inspired by a movie called Road to Nowhere by Monte Hellman. Fabio Testi (the main character in Reflection in a Dead Diamond) is in this, and he was dressed in a white suit like Dick Bogarde in Death in Venice, and his look was like Sean Connery."

— Bruno Forzani

"There is a character who is all dressed in black leather, a mysterious character called the Kinetik, who is based on the look of the killer in Blood and Black Lace."

— Hélène Cattet

"La prisonnière by Henri-Georges Clouzot, because it's a movie that uses the art of optical illusion. And our film is a film about illusion, and the storytelling — this stereoscopic writing [style] from Satoshi Kon — gives the illusion of a 3D narrative, and aesthetically it was the perfect art to talk about illusion and the illusion of images."

— Bruno Forzani

"There is another Mario Bava film called Danger: Diabolik. Our film's character Serpentik is based on Diabolik. It's a female point of view of Diabolik. Fumetti neri — the comics from Italy of the '60s — is one of the great inspirations for the movie. We use the drawings to blur the border between reality and fiction. Because little by little, in the movie, you don't know if you're in the real world or in a fake world, and the use of the drawings helped us to tell that in a cinematographic way."

— Bruno Forzani

"There is one Eurospy called OK Connery. It's [officially titled] Operation Kid Brother. It's from Alberto De Martino. It's a fake James Bond starring the brother of Sean Connery, Neil Connery, and it's set on the French Rivera, like our movie. And it's very pop, very psychedelic, very fun, and we use that kind of universe to talk about the past. You know, you sometimes idealize the past, and this kind of movie represents the past in a very fun way. You know, 'Everything is easy. You can have what you want. You can do what you want' ... "

— Bruno Forzani

"So we used that universe, that imagery, to contrast with today, where the world is out of reach."

— Hélène Cattet

"Maybe The Father is the last one, with Anthony Hopkins. Because our main character is losing his mind; he is losing his bearings."

— Hélène Cattet

"It's a bit like [our movie], but in an action way."

— Bruno Forzani