Set against the sweltering backdrop of a French summer heatwave, The Balconettes (Les femmes au balcon, 2024) emerges as a razor-sharp horror-comedy that peels open the private lives of four women—Denise, Nicole, Ruby, and Elise. What first seems like the ordinary rhythms of their days soon spirals into something darker and more absurd, as each is forced to confront not only the men orbiting their lives but also the suffocating weight of a patriarchal world.
Through biting humor, bursts of surreal imagery, and flashes of shocking violence, the film probes desire, control, and the struggle for freedom. Its grotesque moments are punctured by comedy, creating a tonal tightrope that feels both outrageous and incisive. At its heart, though, The Balconettes is less about spilled blood than about the bonds forged between women when they are pushed to the brink—when society insists on seeing them only as objects of desire or submission. By amplifying its absurd tone, the film underscores just how absurd the constraints placed upon women truly are.
This article contains spoilers.
The Balconettes (Les femmes au balcon, 2024) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens in an apartment complex in France. A radio announcement asks people to stay indoors due to a severe heatwave. In one apartment, a woman named Denise sleeps on the balcony. A while later, Denise’s husband, Robert, kicks Denise, asking her to give him food. When Denise does not wake up, Robert pours water on Denise. In anger, Denise takes a dustpan and slashes Robert’s head. After that, Robert crawls to the balcony. There, Denise kills Robert through asphyxiation. In another apartment, Nicole watches a naked man living across her apartment. Seeing the man, Nicole starts to masturbate.
Just then, Denise arrives, asking Nicole to call emergency services as Denise has killed Robert. If Denise calls the cops, she won’t be able to hide her joy. In another house, Ruby is kissing two men. Now, Ruby leaves to meet Nicole, who is half naked, asking Nicole to apply lotion on her back. As Nicole does that, she tells Ruby about a story she is writing, which is a romantic one. It’s about a woman who watches a man from afar every day and falls in love with him. There is a commotion outside as Elise has arrived in a frantic state, damaging the neighbour’s (the one Nicole is staring at every day) car.
Why is Ruby alone with Magnani?
As Nicole calms down Elise, Ruby runs down to sort the car situation. From the balcony, Nicole sees Ruby and the man talking happily. Nicole is sure the man will fall in love with Ruby. When Ruby texts the man asking about the amount that needs to be reimbursed, the man flirts. Later, Ruby gets in front of the camera trying to turn on a man, as Ruby is a cam girl. Meanwhile, Elise’s husband, Paul, calls Elise asking her to stop running away from things. That night, the girls drink and dance on the balcony as the neighbour watches. So the girls text the neighbour man, who asks the girls to come over for a glass of wine.
In the neighbour’s house (Magnani), they learn that Magnani is a photographer who specializes in boudoir photography. Ruby volunteers to pose for Magnani if he is looking for a model. They all start to dance, but Elise gets sick and pukes. Ruby goes live to tell her fans that she is getting a legit photoshoot done. Since Elise is feeling unwell, Nicole takes her home, leaving Ruby with Magnani. That night, Nicole sees a dead Robert conversing with her, which freaks her out. Late at night, Ruby comes home covered in blood, feeling lost. The next day, Nicole and Elise call the cops, thinking Ruby is hurt. After showering Ruby, they rush to Magnani’s house.
What happens between Paul and Elise?
There, they see a dead Magnani. Immediately, the girls assure Ruby that they know whatever happened is not her fault. Since they have called the cops, they start to clean the apartment to eliminate any fingerprints left behind. Now, Nicole has an idea to take Magnani’s body away and hide it. If there isn’t any corpse, they won’t get caught. Suddenly, Magnani’s neighbour starts knocking on the door. So, Elise starts making sexual noises so the neighbours go away. They now put Magnani’s body in the darkroom in a box. Then the girls clean the blood. Under a cot, Nicole finds Magnani’s penis. So, Nicole takes it home. At home, Elise gets a call from Paul, who says he is going to be in town. Hence, Paul asks Elsie to meet him in the hotel.
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The next day, Elise struggles because of the heatwave. Eventually, Elise falls flat on the ground due to the harsh sun. Meanwhile, Nicole enters Magnani’s house. Suddenly, the neighbour gets inside the house, worried about Magnani. Nicole hides inside the box with a dead Magnani. At the hospital, the doctor tells Elise that she is six weeks pregnant.
In Magnani’s house, once the neighbour leaves, Nicole stitches Magnani’s penis back. Meanwhile, Ruby continues to go live, but her face is now covered. In the hotel, Elise and Paul chat and kiss. However, when Paul wants to have sex, Elise refuses, which irritates Paul as Elise does not want to have sex ever. Furthermore, Paul wants to have kids. Additionally, Paul is also annoyed because it is always him having an orgasm and not Elise.
Who does Nicole confront in Magnani’s house?
Despite Elise’s refusal, Paul sleeps with Elise. Annoyed, Elise leaves the hotel. Meanwhile, Nicole sees a dead Magnani, which scares her, so she rushes home. That night, Ruby goes live and recounts everything that happened. Since Ruby is comfortable in her skin, she didn’t mind taking off her top when Magnani asked her to for a photo. However, Magnani put his fingers inside Ruby’s mouth and asked her to open it wide. Next thing Magnani says to Ruby is that they need to fuck now. Hearing this, Nicole and Elise console Ruby. The next day, the trio carries Magnani in a trash can to their house and dumps his body in the fridge.
They also notice cops who arrest Denise. Later, Nicole is coached by her mentor about the story when she sees Magnani, who says there are many men like him in his apartment. Soon, Nicole goes to Magnani’s apartment and confronts the dead men. So, Nicole tells the men that the reason they are dead is that they have either hurt, abused, raped, or assaulted someone. However, the men refuse the claims. Meanwhile, Elise visits the doctor to get abortion pills. After that, the girls go to a convenience store to buy some supplies. There, a man recognises Ruby and tries to flirt. However, Ruby gives the man a lecture on how to satisfy a woman.
The Balconettes (Les femmes au balcon, 2024) Movie Ending Explained:
At home, the girls chop Magnani’s body, put it in two suitcases, and carry it outside. Sadly, Paul has arrived to win over Elise. When Paul irritates Elise, she tells him that she got an abortion and leaves. The girls don’t stop for Paul. Now, Nicole asks the girls to run as she can see all the dead men. Near the boat, Elise expresses to Paul how he has inconvenienced Elise throughout their marriage, which comes as a surprise to Paul.
They now get inside a boat and sail away. After a while, the girl dumps the two suitcases in the water and notices another boat with two women dumping garbage bags into the water. Near the house, Nicole confronts Magnani, who expresses that he is scared. Before disappearing, Magnani confesses to having raped Ruby. At home, Ruby reads Nicole’s story and is impressed. In the last scene, all the women walk freely on the roads.
The Balconettes adopts the lens of horror-comedy to explore the issues women face, as well as the subtle conditioning they internalize in order to survive within a patriarchal world. Take Ruby, for instance—outgoing and unapologetic, she works as a cam girl, a choice that instantly brands her as ‘easy’ in the eyes of men. Yet Ruby’s decision is not driven by financial desperation but by pleasure and self-determination, which makes her existence all the more subversive. Her very autonomy—her desire to enjoy her work on her own terms—becomes problematic in a society that cannot reconcile female sexuality with agency. Magnani’s treatment of Ruby, dismissing her as someone who would sleep with anyone, lays bare the pervasive stereotypes projected onto women like her.”
Elise’s story unfolds differently but points to the same structures of control. In a striking exchange with Paul toward the end, she reminds him that marriage does not grant him unlimited access to her body. Yet Paul cannot grasp this—her moods, desires, or refusals remain irrelevant to him. The film makes visible how abuse manifests in quiet, everyday ways: in the hotel room, Paul forces himself on Elise despite her lack of consent, reducing intimacy to entitlement. The question of children intensifies this imbalance. Paul insists on impregnating Elise, disregarding her own wishes, her timing, or her agency. When she finally reveals she had an abortion, Paul’s incomprehension underscores how little her voice registers in their marriage.
Nicole, in contrast, longs for something tender and simple—a sweet, romantic life that she also hopes to capture in her writing. But this yearning makes her invisible, even dull, in the eyes of men like Magnani, who casually dismiss her. Through these characters, the film maps out a spectrum of patriarchal expectations: the sexualized woman, the dutiful wife, the romantic dreamer—all suffocated by labels and demands that deny them complexity. The final image—women walking together in happiness—emerges as a symbol of release, a vision of what it means to be free of these suffocating roles, to live beyond the sociological conditioning imposed upon them.
