Flight of the Red Balloon with Juliette Binoche: DVD Cover

    Flight of the Red Balloon
    a.k.a. Le Voyage du ballon rouge Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien Cast: Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu, Hippolyte Girardot, Song Fang

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    • DVD Release Date: 10/21/2008
    • Original Release: 2007
    • Rating: Not Rated
    • Sales Rank: 28,902

    Viewer Rating: (2 ratings)

    Detailed Rating: "Soundtrack" See All

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    • Overview
    • Editorial Reviews
    • Scenes
    • Customer Reviews
    • Cast & Crew
    • Full Product Details

    Scenes

    Scene Index

    Disc #1 -- Flight of the Red Balloon
    1. Are You Coming? [:14]
    2. The Red Balloon [:10]
    3. Piano Lesson [11:15]
    4. Cooking [8:37]
    5. Pretend Sister [5:11]
    6. Can't Find It [9:27]
    7. Translation [9:23]
    8. Pancakes [5:01]
    9. Lease [7:28]
    10. Film Transfer [3:43]
    11. Working [6:18]
    12. Phone Call [9:54]
    13. Tuning the Piano [7:08]
    14. Sleep [5:12]
    15. The Painting [8:47]
    16. End Credits [7:09]

    Scene Index

    Editorial Reviews

    Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon), which constitutes celebrated Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's first French-language picture, represents both an homage to Albert Lamorisse's beloved 1956 short The Red Balloon and an expansion of that earlier picture. Hou begins with Lamorisse's central conceit -- that of a mysterious red balloon tracking a lonely young French boy around the city -- and broadens the story to weave an extended meditation on urban isolation and dysfunctional, slightly broken Parisian lives. The red balloon here acts as a kind of observer to a little boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu), who lives with his harried mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) -- a voice actress in a puppet theater -- in a cramped flat in the City of Lights. Simon spends the majority of his time away from Suzanne, accompanied by a Chinese film student, Song (Song Fang), who baby-sits. From time to time, Suzanne recognizes her neglect of young Simon and then overcompensates with sporadic bursts of affection and devotion. She remains far more concerned with the pressures of her daily life -- specifically, the problems wrought by her downstairs tenant (Hippolyte Giardot) and by Simon's ere-estranged father -- than with the emotional state of her young son. Meanwhile, Song finds the parallels between the suddenly emergent red balloon and the plotline of the Lamorisse short rather mesmerizing, and films young Song with the balloon to underscore this point. For the most part, Hou foregoes major story developments and simply uses screen time to witness the interaction of Song, Suzanne, and Simon as they live out existences of quiet despair. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide All Movie Guide

    Customer Reviews

    • Viewer Rating:
    • Ratings: 2Reviews: 2

    This was NOT what I expectedby kpw814

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    February 22, 2009: My children loved the original Red Balloon, and I was thrilled when I saw this "updated" version. I envisioned a remake, with a young boy chasing his balloon throughout the streets of Paris. That's not what this movie is. We see the boy & the balloon in the beginning, then when we expect the boy to begin following the balloon on his adventure, the film switches to an Asian girl hanging around the front of a building. Did I miss something??? No, this is the introduction of Simon's new nanny. From there on the movie focuses on Simon's disfunctional homelife. Only in the end does the red balloon reappear outside the museum where Simon's class is studying a painting similarly titled The Red Balloon. I was greatly disappointed that I spent my money on this. I would rather have purchased a DVD of the original to replace my much-watched VHS copy.

    An Extemporaneous Homage to Albert Lamorisse's THE RED BALLOONby Anonymous

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    August 24, 2008: Somewhere the highly regarded Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien had the idea of paying homage to the 1956 classic Albert Lamorisse film THE RED BALLOON, a tender story of a child's interaction with a nearly animate floating balloon, and while there is indeed an short introduction of a small boy addressing an errant red balloon floating in Paris, the 'homage' stops there. What follows is an overly long, frustratingly impromptu series of scenes that lack cohesion and resolution. THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (Le Voyage du balloon rouge) is a prolonged (113 minutes) series of scenes that stutter along with the same sort of wandering course of the occasionally visible red balloon to present moments in the life of a disheveled, frumpy, single mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) whose income depends on her fascination and obsession with Chinese marionette presentations for which she supplies the backstage voice for all of the characters. Her absent 'husband/boyfriend' has left her to write in Montreal while Suzanne must care for her young son Simon (Simon Iteanu) with the help of a newly hired Taiwanese photographer nanny Song (Fang Song) while her daughter resides in Brussels. This disheveled household is further complicated by the freeloading Marc (Hippolyte Girardot), the friend of her absentee 'husband', by Simon's piano lessons taught by Anna (Anna Sigalevitch), and by impossible conflicting schedules for marionette performances, partially relieved by Song's quiet ability to take Simon on adventures outside the confines of the cluttered little space they all call home. The only quieting element of this film is the occasional appearance of the 'guardian angel' red balloon, which seems to be a symbol for defining the real world of Simon and the illusory world he craves. The dialogue as written by Hou and Fran&#231 ois Margolin is choppy and the camera work and constant meandering piano music seem extemporaneous: there are few resolutions to the individual stories that are only hinted. Juliette Binoche is a solid actress able to make the most of a minimal script and horrendous costuming and makeup: her moments of being the voice of marionettes are magical. But this Red Balloon just doesn't take flight in the context of this homage. As with the rest of the film the balloon just floats off at the end. The viewer needs a lot of patience with this film! Grady Harp