The Balconettes

A wacky feminist “horror” comedy with three hysterical women, a severed penis, a corpse in the refrigerator, the ghosts of dead men and sizable portions of blood and, mainly, female nudity, the amount of which we’re not used to seeing in the French mainstream (or elsewhere). That nudity interestingly enhances the openness of expressing femininity in the film, which is obviously a metaphor for the difficulty that suffering women have in dealing with men (swine). Though this almost hallucinogenically chaotic genre mish-mash is packed with admirable energy, it lacks functional dramaturgy, which would have made it an objectively good Film with a capital F. [Cannes FF] (05/21/2024)

The most peculiar character for The Balconettes is the episodic figure of the annoying critic, distanced via an online call and naturally in the form of an old white guy, who embodies an alibi for the whole work – he is supposed to defend it against criticism, which has already  been shredded in the spirit of the teenage imperative “you don't understand me, because you’re dumb”. That doesn’t change the fact that The Balconettes remains a boorish mess. Though it aims to make a likably subversive and relieving point, the path that it takes to that goal is very chaotic, neurotic, disorderly and overwrought. That is also true of its protagonists (a writer, an extravagant camgirl, an admired actress), who futilely long to find themselves and their inner self-realisation in the false promises of the would-be liberating media, over which they supposedly have emancipatory control, but which at its core is equally binding and objectifying. (06/30/2024)