Release Date – TBC, Cert – N/A, Run-time – 1 hour 44 minutes, Director – Noémie Merlant
A late-night, mid-heatwave party between three friends (Sanda Codreanu, Soulheila Yacoub, Noémie Merlant) and a handsome neighbour (Lucas Bravo) takes a threatening and deadly turn, leading the trio to figure out how to dispose of a body.
The Balconettes is a film with an underlying streak of darkness. It comes in a number of different forms; directly dealing upfront with the dead, and ghosts coming back to haunt people, and also the threat of sexual abuse and misogyny which hangs over the three central characters. The mixture works well and brings a consistent darkness to both the comedy and drama at hand as the film leans towards horror tones and ideas without often treading into, or on the line of, the genre itself. Yet, amongst all of this, it still finds room for a couple of fart gags.
Even as central friends Nicole (Sanda Codreanu), Ruby (Soulheila Yacoub) and Elise (co-writer and director Noémie Merlant) find themselves trying to dispose of a body, and deal with the worry and panic that comes with it, especially in the wake of the events building up to the death, there are still patches of humour to be found. They’re well wound in and make for a successful dramedy which consistently focuses on the central friendship and the strong bond between the three. The trio stare from the balcony of Nicole and Ruby’s flat at a neighbouring apartment block where an attractive stranger (Lucas Bravo) consistently catches writers-block-inflicted author Nicole’s eye. When the three are invited mid-heatwave to a late-night gathering at his apartment a tipsy, flirty evening soon takes a dark turn that’s only fully realised the next morning when outgoing cam-girl Ruby becomes silent, staring horrified into the distance.
As the three try to work out what to do with the body the ghost of the stranger starts to haunt and taunt Nicole. This begins to spread to a slightly broader element about seeing the dead which doesn’t entirely click as much as the film perhaps hopes it would, despite some good moments, and at times it sits apart from everything else within the narrative – fortunately it makes for the briefest/ least focused on of ideas. Although, in terms of its knock-on effect into the film’s other strands and the overhanging themes of toxic masculinity, misogyny and its impact on the women in their lives, work and relationships. there is some good work done in this strand that still manages to engage.
The biggest strengths, as mentioned, are based in the friendship, and with that the impact that the key turn of events has on each character. The central performances each bring further strength to the characters and the film as a whole, bringing you further in to the relationships and the ways in which each figure reacts and pushes forward in the wake of the leaking chaos. There’s humour to be found with a good deal of laughs surrounding some of the first reactions, and tense situations, that crop up – Nicole hiding in the apartment of the deceased while his neighbours look around having not seen him for a few days has a sense of tense glee to it with threat and humour walking hand in hand with the splatterings of blood.
Merlant, both in direction and screenplay – co-written with Céline Sciamma, this marking a very different script to those which she’s penned before – captures the mixture of panic, chaos, humour and darkness effectively and while sometime the mixture holds scenes of the characters on their own slightly back when all together there’s a lot to enjoy about the way they work together and the overall tone of the film as a whole. A tone which could so easily turn leading things to become an overall different film but manages to avoid doing so and keeps a generally consistent style to the proceedings that’s caught within the bond between the wonderfully performed central friends.
An entertainingly dark dramedy with a trio of great performances at the centre while certain moments of The Balconettes focusing on singular characters may not fully capture the tonal mix when as a group there’s a strength to the relationship and blend of ideas and styles.
Just A Little Bit Random 