BALCONETTES

A summer heatwave brings Marseille to the boil. Three young friends mingle with their neighbors from their balcony. Until a late-night drink turns into a bloody affair. This cheeky and provocative foray into the genre celebrated its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival 2024. The young French director Noémie Merlant is a welcome guest at Cannes. She has attended the important film festival four times as an actress and twice as a director. The screenplay for this feminist "pop candy" was written in collaboration with Céline Sciamma. The Balconettes - Sometimes bloody, sometimes playful, always vengeful. (Barnsteiner Film)

Above all, this has to do with established image routines: For as great as the emancipatory concern of works such as THE SUBSTANCE or THE UGLY STEPSISTER may be, the cinematic means often remains the same: the violated female body on display. Its mutilation, even in the name of criticism, has become a habit. The fact that audiences have long become accustomed to such images, but not to comparable visual violence against the bodies of the perpetrators, points to deep-seated viewing habits that are often not questioned, even in a feminist context. BALCONETTES thwarts these habits with an almost disrespectful consistency - and because this change of perspective is still an exception in film, it hits harder and has a more lasting impact. (Die Zeit)