Reflection in a Dead Diamond, on Shudder

Maybe all those martinis are not so good for a secret agent, even if they are stirred and not shaken. Retired spy John Dimon had more than his share of debauched indulgence—and it now shows. Unfortunately, he suspects bad karma and old enemies from his former life have come back to settle the score in Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s Reflection in a Dead Diamond, which premieres this Friday on Shudder.

Explaining the storyline of a Cattet & Forzani film is always a tricky proposition. They mainly care about imagery, rather than the stuff that preoccupies middlebrow squares, such as plot. Their first two films, Amer and The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears were tributes to Italian Gialos, while Let the Corpses Tan riffed on hardboiled Poliziotteschi movies. With Dead Diamond they take on the spy genre. While there are a few Bond references here and there (as well as more liberal indulgences in bondage), their reference point is really Mario Bava’s Danger: Diabolik and its source graphic novels, with maybe a little bit of Irma Vep and Les Vampires thrown in for good measure.

So yes, that means there will be a lot of leather cat suits. Apparently, Dimon’s old nemesis Serpentik is up to her old tricks—or maybe he is just having flashbacks to his groovy glory years. Honestly, viewers can hardly better tell when anything happens than he can.

Like the filmmaking duo’s previous film, Dead Diamond is more of a series stylized set pieces rather than a linear (or even fractured) storyline. So far, their approach worked best in Corpses Tan, which makes their latest feel like a step backward.

Regardless, their trusted cinematographer Manuel Dacosse fully understands their fetishized approach to filmmaking. It is all style and flash. Yet, they still demand much from their cast, especially Fabio Testi, who is convincingly degenerate and physically decaying as old Dimon. Celine Camara also holds up well under the filmmakers’ withering lens as an opera singer recruited by the younger Dimon to serve as his undercover informant and femme fatale honeytrap.

To their credit, Cattet & Forzani perfectly understand the genre particulars that make fans swoon. They consistently master the look and vibe of the films that inspire them, but they stubbornly refuse to tie it all together with satisfying storytelling. This is what they do and they’re not making any concessions to anyone. Again, the results are always as frustrating as they are intriguing, but in this case, they are somewhat more the former. Maybe worth streaming for half an hour to get the flavor, Reflection in a Dead Diamond still lacks sufficient substance to fully recommend it as a film when it hits Shudder this Friday (12/5).