I initially became a fan of Noémie Merlant after seeing her in Celine Sciamma's exquisite “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”. Until then I was not aware of her, nor how prolific she actually is. Since then I have seen heaps of films with her in it, but I wasn't aware that she had directed anything. Her second film as director, “The Balconettes”, was a “surprise title” at MIFF this year, in that it wasn't initially announced with the rest of the programme but about a week into the festival (along with six or seven other titles). It has become a tradition for MIFF to announce surprise titles each year, and it is usually a source of frustration for me because if something does interest me, it usually doesn't fit into the schedule I have set for myself over the festival. This year though the only title that interested me was Merlant's “The Balconettes” and I was both shocked and ecstatic when I realised it actually fit into my schedule. Two other things shocked me about “The Balconettes”, the first being that Merlant had made what has been described as a horror or slasher film, and the second that Celine Sciamma had a hand in writing it alongside Noémie Merlant.
“The Balconettes” opens with a fabulous scene that sees the camera glide around the balconies of an apartment block. In the middle of a heat wave, most of the residents are outside, trying to cool themselves whilst the camera continues moving (in an obvious nod to Alfred Hitchcock's “Rear Window”). Passing many apartments, and floors of the building, the camera eventually settles on a woman who we assume is laying on the floor of her balcony for some respite against the heat. However it soon becomes obvious, through the many bruises on her body, that she has just suffered a beating from her violent husband. While lying there in extreme pain, the man verbally abuses her, telling her to get up and make his dinner. This is the straw that broke the camel's back, as the woman rises with a gardening trowel in her hand, before belting her husband across the back of the head with it in a bloody attack. The man attempts to crawl to safety, but the woman sits on his face, suffocating him until he eventually passes away. Meanwhile life in the neighbourhood goes on, with the same original camera shot continuing, no one noticing the man being murdered near by. The camera sets off again, this time settling on another neighbour, Nicole (one of our three main characters), who is fantasising about the hot new neighbour that has just moved in, masturbating to her fantasises, just as her roommate Ruby walks out on the balcony and almost catches her in the act. The brilliance of this opening scene (besides its bravura camerawork) is that it sets the tone of the film perfectly; you know that it is going to be fun, funny, full of colour, bloody when it needs to be, and very sexually frank. Merlant is able to set this all up in just one scene and a couple of minutes. Right from the outset, she proved to be a much better director than I was expecting, particularly when it came to her visual expressionism.
First off, let me get this out of the way, “The Balconettes” is NOT a horror film and it is nothing like a slasher film. I would describe it as a black comedy, with horror elements, and I suppose from a tonal point of view, I think it is similar to John Landis's “An American Werewolf in London”, although that film definitely skews more towards horror than “The Balconettes” despite all the blood and gore within it. The film has been made by women, for women, and it is essentially a call of “enough is enough!!!” (like the woman killing her husband in the opening scene). Merlant is out to illuminate just the kind of things women are exposed to and the social standards they are expected to adhere to, and then crush these expectations to show that these women are human like their male counterparts, and not just sexual objects for men to objectify. In the film her characters fart, have hairy armpits, masturbate, have their own sexual fantasises (instead of being the subject of someone else's), and they enjoy sex just as much as men. Ruby is even a cam-girl who enjoys her work both for herself, and her customers. These are not the mothers, librarians, teachers or girlfriends of other films.
Eventually Nicole and Ruby are joined by their friend Elise (played by Merlant herself), an actress who has just finished shooting a television movie about Marilyn, and the three of them end up partying with the new, hot neighbour over the courtyard. After drugs and alcohol are consumed, wild dancing has taken place, a camera is brought out. Nicole and Elise head home, leaving Ruby with the guy as she wants to be photographed. We cut to the following morning with Ruby in tears, topless, covered in blood, and find out that during an attempted rape, she killed their neighbour. The girls decide to band together to clean up the apartment and dispose of the body, so Ruby is in the clear from the authorities. However, during the clean-up, Nicole starts seeing the ghost of the man just murdered.
“The Balconettes” is such an enjoyable film although it is tonally inconsistent. It is filled with brilliant ideas, that I loved for their inclusion but some of the execution of these ideas could've been done better. The chemistry between the three friends is what makes “The Balconettes” so entertaining, and Sandra Codreanu, Souheila Yacoub and Merlant are excellent together. One of the key messages made in “The Balconettes” is about consent and Merlant makes the point so well by using Ruby as the poor rape victim. Ruby is the pro-sex member of the group; she loves sex, is totally fine with nudity, and doesn't leave much to the imagination in the clothes she wears. However, that still does not give any man the right to touch her or force himself on her if she has no interest in having sex with that person. I am sure in the real world if this went to court, his defence would be “did you see what she was wearing? She wants it” or “c'mon, she is a cam-girl, its what she does for a living”, but that should have no bearing. If she says “NO!” that is the only thing that matters.
As I said at the start of this review, “The Balconettes” is both extremely bloody, and sexually frank. What is funny is that most of the violence is played for laughs, like when they are cleaning up the apartment, which has blood everywhere and they realise that Ruby has cut the man's penis off too. Very amusingly Nicole finds it and takes it home with her to use later, until she realises how stupid she is being and returns to sew it back on him. The film is also filled with nudity, a lot of it supplied by director Noémie Merlant, yet none of it is titillating in nature. It is either used to enhance just what women have to go through in their lives, or like at the end, when it is used more like a “We are woman! Hear us roar!” type anthem, with women walking the streets topless (but not all of them, as again it is about a woman's own choice) and in unison and solidarity. Probably the most confronting scene, from a nudity perspective, is when Elise has a gynaecological exam, and she strips naked and casually spreads her legs wide right in front of the camera, hiding nothing. It is a way of saying that this is something we women go through every day, it is normal, but to see the film's director perform such a scene is so brave.
I mentioned earlier the bravura camerawork at the start of “The Balconettes”, but all of the cinematography by Evgenia Alexandrova is outstanding, giving the film a bright, bubble-gum look to it. However it is the camerawork that is the most special, as it glides through scenes, performing the most incredibly difficult and complex choreography, that it reminded me of the way the camera moves in the films of Gaspar Noe. The only time I didn't like the camerawork and cinematography was during the party scene with the neighbour, as Merlant then resorts to handheld favouring that shaky-cam look that I hate so much.
The one aspect of “The Balconettes” that I felt didn't really work was the inclusion of all the male ghosts, who had been killed by women (who they themselves were victims of either physical or sexual abuse). I understood the point of them (the fact that these men still refuse to acknowledge that they did anything wrong, and think that they are actually the victims), but I still don't think it works and it affects the film's tone too. The only other issue I had with the film was I felt that some of the scene transitions and editing made the film a little more confusing than it should have been.
Overall, I had a great time with Noémie Merlant's “The Balconettes”. While it is definitely not a horror film, it is a fun and bloody black comedy, that sees the women of the world standing up, together as one and saying enough is enough. It has been wonderfully directed by Merlant, and the camerawork is to die for. The film is not perfect, and some of the elements are a little clunky, but mostly it is just a hell of a lot of fun.
3 Stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment