Noémie Merlant’s first film as a director is relentlessly silly, self-indulgent and unsuited to its themes of misogyny and sexual violenceere to prove that “actor project” movies are always the ones with the dodgiest acting is the otherwise estimable French star Noémie Merlant who presents her writing-directing debut in Cannes, with herself in a leading role andon board as producer and credited as script collaborator.
But I have to say that the film is relentlessly silly, self-indulgent and self-admiring with a certain tiring kind of performer narcissism, always tending towards a jangling tone of celebratory affirmation which can’t absorb or do justice to the themes of misogyny and sexual violence that this film winds up being about. The cod-thriller scenes of corpse disposal do not convince on a realist level and do not work as comedy either.
The “balconettes” of the title are three neighbours and friends in flats in a courtyard in Marseille; during one endless hot summer in the city they hang out on each other’s balconies to escape the sweltering heat. They are online sex worker Ruby , aspiring novelist Nicole and Elise, an actor, played by Merlant herself, who sweeps into the action a little late having just finished a film shoot where she’s playing Marilyn Monroe.
All three of them, and especially Ruby, are thirsting for a hot guy they can see through his balcony window in the apartment opposite, a top fashion photographer who’s always lounging around with his shirt off. He invites all three round to his apartment for drinks one night, and things spiral out of control.
The performances are exhaustingly unsubtle and undirected and the film’s failure to hit the comic note early on has the added disadvantage of undermining the avowedly serious moments of solidarity and body-positivity at the end. Merlant certainly keeps the energy levels high and the film barrels frantically along; it’s not exactly a vanity project but one that needed a stricter controlling presence.