The Balconettes: Review. By Josiah Teal.
The Balconettes pays homage to Rear Window quickly. The camera pans across a beautiful French apartment complex, focusing on he lives of the tenants living out among the many balconies overlooking the street below. Noemie Merlant’s promises of Hitchcockean thrills go beyond homage as The Balconettes gives way to a voyeursistic horror comedy, oozing with style. Centering around three lively and nosy friends, Merlant’s epic of apartment life and friendship takes a turn for the grim as some neighbors are more horrifying than they seem.
The premise is simple on paper: three friends navigating love, sex, and spying on neighbors in their French apartment. Sounds like the premise for a Romcom. Yet the Merlant treats audiences to a quirky, dark, and thrilling story of relationships, sex, and violence. The film opens with Denise (Naege Beausson-Diagne) allegedly murdering her husband. Denise’s husband’s slaying is just the beginning of the dark laughs to follow in the first half of The Balconettes.
Denise tells of her smothering her husband to Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), one of the three “Baclonnettes.” Nicole, a struggling writer looking for a muse, Ruby (Souheila Yacoub), a zany camgirl, and Eilse (director Noemie Merlant), a TV actor with a major film opportunity. As Nicole lusts after a handsome neighbor and listens to Denise’s homicidal hilarity, the story of these friends takes a sudden turn when Elise damages the handsome neighbor’s car.
Our handsome neighbor turns out to be Magnani (Lucas Bravo), an erotic photographer always on the prowl for women to photograph. He seems charming enough, disarming even, but when the girls join him for drinks, terror unfolds. The night of partying over, memories fractured, and Ruby enters her apartment covered in blood. But whose blood is Ruby wearing? And what sinister acts are yet to come?
Each of the three Baclonnettes give stellar performances. The story is a total ensemble piece relying on the seamless chemistry of each woman. Yacoub brings humor and horror to Ruby, balancing the fun-loving, sexual openness with brutal shock in the second half. Yacoub’s transition from playful sexuality to catatonic numbness to uncovering deep trauma drives the key emotional beats of the narrative, allowing for the realness of the wild to take root in the hearts of the audience. Merlant and Codreanu have excellent chemistry, delivering a natural rhythm to the quirky, witty dialogue on display throughout The Balconettes.
Macabre laughs, gender commentary, and sex positivity flow in every scene as Merlant weaves a variety of influences into her feminist feature. From premise to clear homage, Hitchcock influences add suspense and style to The Balconettes, elevating already impressive cinematography. Tarantino influences are present, but merge so seamlessly into the context of French cinema that it’s difficult to tell if stylish dialogue comes straight from Tarantino’s inspiration or from those who inspired Tarantino. Charlie Kaufman and Spike Jonze’s influences play a massive part in the second half as the story turns towards daunting emotions and questions of narrative realities. Yet every influence from classic Hollywood horror to Gen X indie icons is recontextualized through the modern voice of Noemie Merlant.
Second-half twists can be challenging to pull off. It takes a lot of trust from the audience, especially the twists beginning in the 2nd and 3rd acts of The Balconettes. Merlant has crafted a tale of two movies, but the first half of the film is vital to heavy emotions played out in the 3rd act. Some elements in the 3rd act may pull some viewers out of the story; things, at times, get weird for weird’s sake. But trust is key with any twist, and trust is massive with The Balconettes.
However, trusting Noemie Merlant’s vision leads to a cathartic climax to a story much deeper than dark laughs and blood-stained apartments. At its core, The Balconettes is a relevant film addressing relationships, the creative process, female empowerment, an assault on predatory behavior, and a feminist anthem all rolled into a haunting, thrilling, funny, and engaging cinematic experience.
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