Nothing in “The Balconettes” quite matches the practically self-contained, minute-long short that starts actor-director Noémie Merlant’s frantic, heatstruck genre mashup in terms of taut suspense or conceptual clarity. A middle-aged woman, fed up with her husband, collapses on her balcony on a sweltering summer afternoon in Marseilles, where the air conditioning system is failing. The poor woman cracks when her rude husband slaps her with a water bottle and tells her to return to her work. She gets up and uses a steel dustpan to knock him out, covers him with a towel, and sits on him until all life drains from his body. This incredibly enjoyable vignette gives the movie an early round of applause as it doesn’t even need any background information.
With the exception of a quick picture later showing her being led out of the building by police, that is the last we see of this character’s predicament. Instead, “The Balconettes” shifts to a neighbouring apartment where a younger trio of ladies take drastic measures in response to inappropriate male behaviour (cue some jeers to go along with the earlier applause). Their somewhat convoluted plot isn’t as well-crafted or as viscerally appealing as the little story of misery that comes before it, but Merlant’s deliberate illogic in his follow-up to the equally ramshackle road movie “Mi Iubita Mon Amour” from 2021 is essentially its point. Before things take a supernatural turn, almost the whole plot of the movie is driven by the kind of sun-drunk summertime lunacy that leads to poor snap decisions and worse catastrophes.
Merlant, who is known for her poised and attentive roles in movies such as “Tár” and “Portrait of a Lady on Fire,” co-wrote “The Balconettes” with Céline Sciamma, the director of the latter, who isn’t usually connected to this particular brand of quirky, niche humour. But the directing force being channelled here is more akin to that of early Pedro Almodóvar, as Merlant pours on saturated, hot-hued melodrama, garrulous female bonding, and gleeful lashings of blood and sex (it’s opening, oddly enough, in Cannes’ usually weird Midnight section). Souheila Yacoub’s blatantly sex-positive, flamboyantly accessorised cam-girl Ruby is the most striking figure in this cast. She feels like she was plucked from a Planet Pedro ensemble, albeit with a French twist.
Though she has a clinging husband named Paul (Christophe Montenez), Élise (Merlant), an actress, seems to live there most of the time. Ruby shares a messy boho-chic apartment with Nicole (Sanda Codreanu, who looks like a French Rachel McAdams), an equally shy aspiring author. The reason these three very different women are close friends is never fully explained in Merlant’s script, but they still make for a dynamic trio that gets going as soon as Élise arrives at the apartment (still sporting her platinum Marilyn Monroe drag from her most recent film shoot, another Almodóvar detail) in a panic over Paul, whose harassingly frequent phone calls. She crashed into the priceless vintage automobile belonging to Magnani, the handsome photographer across the street who has Nicole pining away from the balcony. Magnani is the romantic partner of “Emily in Paris” star Lucas Bravo. Nicole was driving over in a frenzy.
The three women receive an offer to his place for drinks after Ruby, who is always gregarious, resolves the conflict with Magnani. But to Nicole’s dismay, it soon becomes apparent that he is solely interested in Ruby when they get there. (Due to her signature look, which features a lot of bare skin and opulent makeup with sequin appliqués, she tends to draw attention.) The other two leave, realising their mistake when Ruby returns to them covered in blood and in a catatonic state after unintentionally (and most horrifyingly) killing him when he tried to rape her. With the knowledge that the police won’t view it that way—all of the men here are scum and scummer—the buddies band together to dismember and dispose of the body, with increasingly absurd outcomes.
There’s more to the story of “The Balconettes” than just that. Nicole is shocked to discover Magnani’s puzzled ghost in his apartment, and Paul pursues Élise, who turns out to be unexpectedly pregnant. As the film barrels along, it becomes clear that the mousy writer possesses what may be the most unwanted sixth sense imaginable: she sees dead people, but exclusively dead male abusers. This turns out to be a very busy spiritual realm. This is the least developed plot point in a convoluted story, but since the movie is so ambitious, it can afford to make a few mistakes without faltering. Its haphazard comedy, which veers from the genuinely silly to the bizarrely dark, is no better. There are enough laughs to sustain the momentum despite a recurring joke about Élise’s stress-induced flatulence not even working the first time.
Nevertheless, “The Balconettes” works best when it takes a breath, stops, and looks serious for a bit. Examples of this include the tense opening scene and the unsettlingly ill-fated hotel room reconciliation between Élise and Paul, which highlights the various forms that sexual assault can take. The setting’s intensely oppressive humidity heightens the sense of desperation in these kinds of sequences. Eugenia Alexandrova’s wandering camerawork is always appropriately feverish and scorched with colour, starting with a dizzying flight across the many balconies of the residential lane where the action takes place. This shot kind of teases a more structured movie, maybe one that adopts a location-bound, “Rear Window”-style approach and shows a mosaic of female crises seen via balustrades and windows. It’s difficult to argue with Merlant’s assertion that discipline is the last thing on his mind.
