There are 50 shades of toxic masculinity on display in The Balconettes, a splashy female-driven ensemble comedy that gradually morphs into a graphically gory, darkly funny, intermittently great feminist horror bloodbath. Back behind the camera for her second feature, actor turned writer-director Noémie Merlant covers an ambitiously broad range of pulpy genres, comic registers and political messages here, sometimes in a tonally jarring and heavy-handed way. But despite sledgehammer levels of subtlety, Merlant and her lively cast mostly serve up an enjoyably fizzy spiked cocktail of bright hues and tangy flavours, all wrapped in a stylish package that falls somewhere between Pedro Almodovar and Julia Ducournau.
The Balconettes world premieres this week in the Midnight Movie section in Cannes, where its theme of angry women fighting back against violent, entitled men feel particularly timely. With French cinema finally waking up to the post MeToo climate, the festival’s program is awash with female film-makers taking an axe to patriarchy and misogyny, many using an elevated genre format. Céline Sciamma, who directed Merlant in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), helped with various aspects of the project, scoring story and executive producer credits here. Following domestic release in August, this hormonally supercharged hot mess of a movie should also make waves outside France based on its subject matter, fan-friendly horror-comedy mix, and Merlant’s own growing international profile.
Merlant certainly has a keen visual sense. In her arresting opening sequence, an aerial camera dances from balcony to balcony of a large urban apartment block in Marseilles during a sweltering heatwave, picking up little snippets of multiple life stories, including a bleakly hilarious vignette of domestic vengeance that sets the tone for later events.
The focus then settles on Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), an aspiring writer struggling to compose a rom-com novel in the punishing heat. Nicole’s friend and neighbour Ruby (Souheila Yacoub) is a sexually liberated bohemian who scrapes a living as a “cam girl”, offering private online shows for paying male customers. The pair are soon joined by Elise (Merlant herself), a highly strung actress resplendent in full Marilyn Monroe wig, who has just fled from Paris to Marseilles to escape some stressful issues at home, notably her needy boyfriend, whose constant sexual demands come thinly disguised in flowery romantic devotion.
All three are soon sharing Nicole’s latest voyeuristic fantasy crush (Lucas Bravo), a a hot fashion photographer who lives in the opposite apartment building. While Nicole is not confident enough to make an approach, Ruby is a fearless professional flirt. Pretty soon all three are heading to a party at the handsome stranger’s bachelor pad. What happens next is initially a boozy blur, but Merlant uses flashbacks to unravel a debauched late-night orgy culminating in rape, revenge and bloody violence. As the three women then scramble to cover up any connection to the crime scene.
Partly inspired by events in Merlant’s own life, The Balconettes feels at time like a full-spectrum survey of the worst male behaviour towards women, from low-level microagressions and mansplaining jerks to full-blooded sexual assault. There is even a chorus of resentful ghosts of men murdered in revenge for their abusive acts, who must remain in limbo until they accept responsibility, a breakthrough due roughly the same time as hell freezes over. Dark subject matter, but the default tone here is cheerfully grisly satire rather than horror, with mangled bodies and a severed penis played for laughs as much as shock value.
Merlant also peppers the film with female nudity, including a full-frontal gynaecological examination, plus topless women of all ages, a motif intended to subvert the visual grammar of cinema that typically panders to the male gaze. The director says she wanted to give her heroines “permission to be vulgar”, a freedom usually only granted to male characters on screen. This translates into serial farting gags, a rare depiction of squirting during orgasm, a comically goofy rocking-chair masturbation scene, and more. Whether these aesthetic decisions serve any concrete political function is arguable, but the motives behind them are at least worthy of addressing on screen.
The Balconettes feels forced in places, using broad humour and crude caricatures to hammer home some fairly basic first principles of feminism. The action also becomes a little scattershot in its second half, with too many jerky camera angles and jittery plot swerves instead of a gripping, urgent narrative. But overall, Merlant delivers a riotous, richly imagined portrait of three ladies on fire, all voluptuously packaged in saturated citrus colours and Uele Lamore’s lush, self-consciously retro retro score. Besides her obvious stylistic debt to Almodovar, she also pays winking homage to Sciamma when Elise mentions she is about to act in her first feature, playing a 19th century artist’s muse.
Director, screenwriter: Noémie Merlant
Main cast: Noémie Merlant, Souheila Yacoub, Sanda Codreanu, Lucas Bravo
Cinematography: Evgenia Alexandrova
Editing: Julien Lacharay
Music: Uele Lamore
Production design: Chloe Cambournac
Producer: Pierre Guyard
Production company: Noud-Ouest Films (France)
World sales: mk2
Venue: Cannes film festival (Midnight Movies)
In French
104 minutes
