(Noémie Merlant, 2024, France, 104 minutes)
"This isn't cinema verité; this doesn't have the same realism as my previous film. Instead it's a fairytale, a fable. A punk fable, to be sure."--Noémie Merlant to Variety
Céline Sciamma's 2019 Daphne du Maurier-inspired gothic romantic drama Portrait of a Lady on Fire–with the same-sex subtext of du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca made text–gave French actress Noémie Merlant her breakout role, leading to other notable projects, like Todd Field's 2022 Tár with Cate Blanchett, in which she plays the imperious composer's assistant.
With her second directorial effort The Balconettes, Merlant collaborates with her mentor as co-writer, surely the wisest move she could make in light of Sciamma's efforts in that arena, both for her own films and those of others, like André Téchiné's Being 17 and Jacques Audiard's Paris, 13th District, in which Merlant appears (Animal Kingdom cowriter Pauline Munier also contributed to the screenplay). Merlant is, in other words, in good company.
The Balconettes opens on a Marseilles apartment complex on a sweltering summer day. DP Evgenia Alexandrova showcases one colorful balcony after another as retro pop plays on the soundtrack, before introducing a grim scene in which Denise (Nadège Beausson-Diagne), a put-upon Black woman, takes her revenge on her abusive white husband. When he refuses to die, she turns to some rather comic methods to finish the job. Clearly, a film of wide tonal shifts.
Merlant then turns to the young women at the center of the story. Two are roommates, while the third lives in Paris. Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), who is friendly with Denise, is a self-proclaimed ordinary-looking girl working on a novel about the hot guy across the way, extroverted Ruby (Souheila Yacoub from Dune: Part Two) works as a camgirl, and Merlant's Élise is an actress on a break from her demanding husband, Paul (Christophe Montenez).
They're distinct types, but the chemistry between the ladies combined with the heightened tone prevents them from feeling too much like stereotypes.
After a minor automobile mishap involving Élise and the hot guy, photographer Magnani (Emily in Paris hearththrob Lucas Bravo), a group flirtation ensues, kind of like the voyeuristic scenarios in Rear Window and Monsieur Hire, even if the initial tone is screwball. It's mostly fun and games, though Nicole worries Magnani will end up with Ruby or Élise, since they're both more sexually expressive, even if one isn't actually single.
After a night of partying, one of the three ladies winds up soaked in blood. It isn't clear what happened, though Merlant and Sciamma drop clues that one of them was either victim or attacker, possibly both if self-defense was involved.
Things soon turn even grislier as the ladies join together, much like the female duo in Henri-Georges Clouzot's influential 1955 thriller Les Diaboliques, to cover up a crime in which they may or may not have been involved, but for which at least one of them would surely be implicated.
From that point forward, The Balconettes plunges into horror territory, complete with the ghosts of men who've done the trio wrong. I didn't mind the swerves from comedy to darker modes, but the second-time director (2021's Mi Iubita Mon Amour) lets the acting get away from her at times. The scenario, enhanced by moody lighting and Uèle Lamore's mournful score, is already dramatic enough without all the yelling and screaming.
There's also a lot of extraneous nudity. It fits Ruby's character, but Élise's clothes often slide off her body just for the hell of it--all it takes is a slight breeze--and I'm not sure we needed to see exactly what her gynecologist sees during an exam...though it makes even Paul Verhoeven seem timid.
I like the way the film began, and it held my attention, but lost my sympathies midway through. I'm all for sisterhood, but the men in the film are painted with the broadest of strokes, something I didn't expect from Sciamma, though women battling oppression is a consistent theme for her, one more successfully expressed in 2014's banlieue-set Girlhood.
I found the The Balconettes diverting, and I look forward to seeing all of these actors again, even Lucas Bravo, who plays the eyeliner-wearing villain of the piece, but it didn't quite work for me, not least when the middle-aged Black woman from the prologue pays for the same kind of crime for which the young white women go free. That might not be completely unrealistic, but the ladies forget all about Denise en route to their empowering ending.
The Balconettes plays SIFF Cinema Uptown on May 18 at 9pm and SIFF Cinema Downtown on May 19 at 3:15pm. Souheila Yacoub, an actress of Tunisian and Swiss descent, next appears in Evil Dead Burn. Images from The Guardian (Yacoub, Sanda Codreanu, and Noémie Merlant / Photograph: Nord-Ouest Films – France 2 Cine’ma), ilylucasbravo (Yacoub, Codreanu, and Lucas Bravo), and mk2 Films (Yacoub, Codreanu, and Merlant).
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