Lucas Bravo – ALLIANCE OF WOMEN FILM JOURNALISTS

THE BALCONETTES (Melbourne IFF 2024) – Review by Nadine Whitney

August 26, 2024August 27, 2024 Nadine Whitney Céline Sciamma, Lucas Bravo, Melbourne IFF 2024, Nadège Beausson-Diagne, Noémie Merlant, Sanda Codreanu, The Balconettes

Noémie Merlant’s The Balconettes is a deliciously outré response to the tacit complicity of the French film and cultural institutions in enabling misogyny and gendered violence. With a script co-authored by Céline Sciamma, The Balconettes succeeds in depicting the double standards still applied to women and the ownership of their image and bodies. Women young, old, fat, and thin, walk the streets and dance in freedom away from the weight of men in one stunning scene. Noémie Merlant and Céline Sciamma imagine a world in The Balconettes where France shouts Liberté, égalité, sororité and while the film isn’t an incendiary revolutionary document on its own, it’s adding to the voices growing louder all the time.

Reviews

MRS HARRIS GOES TO PARIS – Review by Martha K Baker

July 26, 2022July 27, 2022 Martha K. Baker (Archived Contributor) Alba Baptista, anthony fabian, Isabelle Huppert, lesley manville, Lucas Bravo, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris seems like a sweet little movie about a sweet little charwoman. It is not. At least, that’s not all it is. The current film is an adaptation of earlier versions, and it presents, not just a woman dreaming of a Dior dress. It explores philosophy, as in Sartre and existentialism; it peers at feminism with references to the “invisible” woman; it juxtaposes lower middle class workers v. upper class twits.

Reviews

MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS – Review by T. J. Callahan

July 13, 2022July 16, 2022 T. J. Callahan Alba Baptista, anthony fabian, Isabelle Huppert, lesley manville, Lucas Bravo, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Mrs. Harris goes to Paris is a classic British chick flick with colorful characters, fun fashion, perfectly polite people and snappy dialogue delivered in a sometimes hard to understand Cockney accent. The film is overly sweet and wide-eyed at times as the thread seems to always end up fitting through the needle, but Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris has a charming innocence we need right now.