This wildly irreverent comedy/horror provocation was written by director/actress Noemie Merlant and Celine Sciamma, who last worked together on the excellent Portrait of a Lady on Fire, with Sciamma directing and Merlant starring. Be forewarned, aside from a baseline theme of female self-reliance, this film is nothing like that! Raunchy, violent, hilarious, gory, fun, supernatural, disturbing, sexual, and subversive as hell, The Balconettes is a genre mash-up that shifts tones so often and so wildly that you may suffer cinematic whiplash.

Merlant’s film has the feel of early Almodóvar with its melodramatic plot, intense female bonding, wild plot shifts, and a mission to provoke, mostly for the fun of it. During a blistering Marseilles heatwave, three women accept an invitation from the cute guy on the balcony across the way. They go over for a drink. Utter mayhem ensues. There are ghosts, corpses, gynecological exams, murder, assault, fart jokes, and pretty much everything else. The women must bond together to find a way through all this patriarchy-induced madness.

As one member of the VTIFF Programming Committee said, “It isn’t so much that the film rejects the male gaze; it refuses to acknowledge that it even exists.” ~SM