‘The Balconettes’ London Film Fest 2024 Review: Feminist and Fantastic
The Balconettes is a fearlessly feminist horror-comedy unafraid to explore every corner of the genre. It’s full of gore, lives in a fantastical world, and highlights that all men are a problem. The film opens with an all-too-familiar moment of a woman, Denise (Nadège Beausson-Diagne) living under her abusive husband’s reign. However, before you finish wishing him a speedy demise, his wife decides to end the cycle by ending him. This is when The Balconettes alerts this audience that this will not be the typical long-suffering narrative we see in movies about abuse. Moments later, Denise goes to her neighbor Nicole (Sanda Codreanu) and cannot contain her excitement about what she has done. This is the first of many good-for-her moments and another sign this movie has no interest in being demure.
The movie then shifts to Nicole, a writer with a crush on a different neighbor, Magnani (Lucas Bravo). As she peers into his window daydreaming, her roommate Ruby (Souheila Yacoub) sneaks her two lovers out of the apartment. Ruby is a camgirl who is uninhibited as she joins Nicole on the balcony topless causing commotion from neighbors who enjoy the view. As the duo dynamic is established, their friend Elise (Noémie Merlant), an actor, literally crashes onto the scene. Elise, in all of her Marilyn Monroe glam, runs the car she is driving into Magnani’s vehicle before fleeing upstairs to the home of her best friends. Elise is escaping her suffocating marriage and has driven from Paris to the one place where she knows she can breathe.
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The three friends’ joyful reunion is interrupted when what seems like a harmless invite to Magnani’s apartment takes a turn. When he assaults Ruby he meets a deservedly gruesome end, and this is when The Balconettes finds its footing. Noémie Merlant and Céline Sciamma’s script manages to give this moment the weight it deserves. They showcase what sisterhood is truly about without missing a beat. Nicole and Elise piece together what happened and prove that they are the correct people Ruby can call to help her hide a body. While the script allows Ruby to process her feelings, the film never loses sight of the fact that it’s capturing the feminine experience.
This is a movie about how we persevere and find true sisterhood. The Balconettes‘engine runs on our collective rage, joy, and the unspoken understanding of what it means to be unapologetically yourself in a world that punishes you for being feminine. It balances this heavy shift beautifully alongside its other reminders of how men constantly fail us.
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As the three friends are dealing with the fallout of Ruby’s assault and their dead neighbor, life goes on. Elise’s husband finds her, and we soon discover why she ran away. We also get an abortion storyline that’s not afraid of the word, and I wish more movies that came out this year could say the same. We see her friends take care of her as she finishes aborting in their apartment. Meanwhile, Nicole is haunted by Magnani’s ghost, who refuses to take responsibility for what he did. This leads to Nicole telling him that he raped her friend and deserved what he got.
Noémie Merlant pulls triple duty playing Elise, co-writing, and directing The Balconettes. I love this script and love what she brought to her character. However, I think the way she navigates this world as a director is nearly flawless and possibly where she excels the most. She expertly drives it through each turn and delivers many unexpected, beautiful, and empowering moments. Towards the end of the movie, it becomes apparent that a lot of women are also getting rid of the men who harmed them in various ways on this night. This leads to women of different sizes, ages, and skin tones taking to the streets to enjoy their freedom from male scrutiny. This moment is so wonderful that it stays with you for days after the credits roll.
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Another way The Balconettes stands out is that it uses nudity to express freedom. While it would have been typical to have only Ruby be topless to mark her as a free spirit, it does not stop there. Once Elise ends her marriage and aborts her fetus, she is seen in an unbuttoned shirt walking the streets with her friends. It is almost as if she can breathe again, and that idea ripples through the city as more women take to the streets, bare-breasted and rejoicing about their new lives.
I cannot stress enough that The Balconettes is one of the funniest movies of 2024. However, it is also unafraid to clap back at a society that struggles to see women as actual people. Between the moments that show us in all our gross glory and the gags that feel akin to Broad City episodes, it is forever heading toward its goal of highlighting the entirety of the feminine experience. It is a dark modern farce for us, by us, and celebrating us.
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The Balconettes
Summary
‘The Balconettes’ is one of the funniest movies of 2024 and is also unafraid to clap back at a society that struggles to see women as actual people.
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