Certificate: TBC

Running Time: 105 mins

UK Distributor: TBC

UK Release Date: TBC

REVIEWED AT BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2024

WHO’S IN THE BALCONETTES?

Souheila Yacoub, Noémie Merlant, Sanda Codreanu, Christophe Montenez, Lucas Bravo, Nadège Beausson-Diagne, Henri Cohen

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Noémie Merlant (director, writer), Céline Sciamma (writer), Pierre Guyard (producer), Uèle Lamore (composer), Evgenia Alexandrova (cinematographer), Julien Lacheray (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

Three friends (Yacoub, Merlant and Codreanu) become involved in an accidental murder…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON THE BALCONETTES?

Noémie Merlant’s sophomore directorial feature The Balconettes has a great opening. It is told in one sweeping shot, as the camera glides over and across the many balconies of a sun-drenched apartment complex somewhere in a coastal French city, until we land on a woman (Nadège Beausson-Diagne) lying unconscious on the floor. We quickly piece together that she’s been knocked out by her abusive husband, but rather than simply lie down and take it, she gets up and without emotion delivers her own sense of bloody justice.

It’s a sequence that immediately sets the off-kilter mood for the rest of Merlant’s film, as well as the oddball tone for everything that is to come. The one problem? The film never, ever returns to it. We see the woman again a couple of times, once not too long after the inciting incident, but her story – arguably a more interesting tale of domestic strife than the one we end up getting – is wrapped up in minutes, rendering it a mere footnote in an otherwise less compelling farce. It’s a shame, because there is great promise in this opening section, only for that promise to stand aside for some half-cooked, and frankly quite irritating, ideas and characters that you’re unfortunately stuck with for the remainder of the film.

Our actual main characters are Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), a writer in the midst of an online course; Ruby (Souheila Yacoub), a free-spirited camgirl who wears her sexuality like a badge of honour; and Élise (Merlant), an actor who’s just finished a job on a low-quality Marilyn Monroe-type movie. They’re best friends who spend their time drinking and fooling around, until they attract the attention of their new neighbour Magnani (Lucas Bravo) who promptly invites them over to his for the evening. Unfortunately, the night takes a dark turn when Magnani winds up dead – after having taken advantage of one of the friends – and they must dispose of the body before the authorities catch wind.

Although the premise suggests a dark comedy in the same vein as Very Bad Things, The Balconettes ultimately struggles with its overall tone. At times, it’s never quite clear what Merlant (along with co-writer Céline Sciamma, her director on Portrait of a Lady on Fire) is trying to achieve, for it apparently settles for screwball dynamics early on, only for the film to indulge in over-the-top violence and even a bit of supernatural horror, all while attempting to juggle some commentary on general misogyny within overtly patriarchal societies. Films that juggle all these various styles and tones can definitely work – hell, just take a peek at what Coralie Fargeat recently accomplished with The Substance – but Merlant isn’t fully able to contain them within a narrative that keeps shifting focus right when it needs to pull itself together.

For a while, until the central death, there’s not even much indication that The Balconettes is going to become anything other than a raunchy hang-out movie. We spend a lot of time with the lead trio as they confidently flaunt their sexuality and share their deepest desires with one another, but in all that time there isn’t a whole lot about these characters that is interesting enough to justify watching a whole movie about them. Despite the actors sharing some decent chemistry, there rarely comes a point where you really do feel that they would do anything for each other, least of all help clear up a dead body and hide half of their penis in a Tupperware box. There’s a shallow emptiness to these characters, who unfortunately aren’t explored to their fullest potential, which makes it annoying to watch since you’re always coming up short on reasons to actually care about them or their connection with one another.

That isn’t to say that Merlant’s film doesn’t have anything to offer, because to a point it does. Aside from that eye-catching opening scene (which, again, is rarely recalled during the rest of the movie), The Balconettes plays around with ideas like a horde of ghosts that cannot move on since they are unable to recognise the wrongs that have wrought upon numerous women in their lives. However, such interesting ideas remain firmly at surface level, as Merlant is seemingly more focused on delivering a farcical romp that ultimately takes little advantage of what it has, and ends up feeling far emptier and even slightly vapid than it perhaps ever intended.

Sadly, The Balconettes doesn’t have much to do or say about anything, which for all its potential makes it all the more disappointing.

SO, TO SUM UP…

The Balconettes carries some intriguing ideas, but they are mainly cast aside in favour of an empty and slightly vapid farce that sees director Noémie Merlant struggling to comprehend the numerous ideas at play.

The Balconettes was playing at this year’s BFI London Film Festival!

Other than that, it’s too early for cinema showtimes, but stay tuned!