Oh, good, everybody in Europe is a sociopath, too.

A Balcony in Limoges

If the first thing a person does when you enter their home is confirm that you’ve recently washed your hands you’re either a successful child or a failed adult. It’s a grim reality with which to be confronted, but you have options. One thing you could do is start washing your hands. Another is murder and dismember everyone who has ever wronged you.

A Balcony in Limoges is fascinating because it doesn’t just posit that both parties in the above scenario can be equally insufferable; it also argues that both responses merit consideration. In fact, unless I’m projecting, here, the movie seems to be leaning towards the murder-and-dismemberment end of the conflict resolution spectrum. France, you dirty, dirty girl, I never knew.

Eugénie and Gladys are our two leads. One is a good person. The other is not. Actually, they’re both awful. Or maybe it depends on your perspective. Or cultural context. Or whether the Quaaludes have hit yet. I’ve seen this fucking movie twice and I’m still not sure where its moral compass is pointing. It might not even have one. Stop making me think for myself, world cinema! Movies are supposed to be either the Avengers punching things or Tom Cruise holding onto the outside of airplanes. It’s like you never even went to film school.

I know a flick is spicy when it won’t let me play one of my favorite movie games, the one where I write a stupid version of a film in my head and then see if the real one follows suit. For example, here are some stupid versions of this movie:

• Eugénie and Gladys reconnect as adults; one has lived too irresponsible a life, the other too predictable. Each learns from the other; moderation reigns supreme.
• Gladys, the irresponsible one, seems like she will be the lunatic/criminal out of the two, but strait-laced Eugénie is the real monster. The banality of evil, social commentary, etc.
• The two start off jealous of one another and then slowly switch roles over the course of the movie, only to end up with the same resentments the other one started the film with. Grass is always greener, etc.

But fucking nope! This movie won’t even grant me the smug glory of an accurate prediction. Limoges doesn’t just zig where it’s supposed to zag – it marches ineluctably forward, powered by the kind of confidence that comes from either knowing exactly what people are going to take away from your story or not giving a shit what people are going to take away from your story.

The End

The sparseness of the commentary in Limoges doesn’t just allow but demands audience participation – this movie is filthy with intellectual space. Remember space? It’s the best. It’s where thinking used to happen.

Listen: the only thing I learned in school about the French is that you can scare them away by making yourself really big and banging empty pots together (we may have been talking about bears). But if this is the kind of stuff they’re cooking up over there in Gaul (our textbooks were also extremely old) then I need more French cinema in my diet. Shit, maybe this movie is supposed to have an obvious moral, and something got lost in translation. But even if that’s the case I’m not complaining, because an excuse to think is an excuse to think.