The Flight of the Red Balloon
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DVD Details
- Rated: Unrated
- Run Time: 1 hours, 55 minutes
- Video: Color
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Released: October 21, 2008
- Originally Released: 2008
- Label: IFC
Performers, Cast and Crew:
Starring | Juliette Binoche | |
Performer: | Simon Iteanu, Hippolyte Girardot, Song Fang & Louise Margolin | |
Directed by | Hsiao-hsien Hou | |
Screenwriting by | Hsiao-hsien Hou & François Margolin | |
Composition by | Camille & Constance Lee | |
Produced by | François Margolin |
Entertainment Reviews:
Rating: 3.5/4 --
A charming, achingly beautiful ode to childhood, channeling the pure-hearted essence of Lamorisse's immortal masterwork.
Full Review
From the Front Row
Mr. Hou's films can be crushingly sad; as with Bresson and Ozu, his restraint only deepens the emotional power of his work...
New York Times
[Hou's] gamble more than pays off, the substance of this deceptively light and pleasingly pretty film lingering long after the red balloon bloats away.
Film Comment
Rating: 3.5/4 --
For all its fuss and fury, Flight of the Red Balloon succeeds magnificently, providing not only an artful homage to Lamorisse's Academy Award-winning short, but also a weightlessly floating tour of the French capital.
Globe and Mail
3 stars out of 5 -- [T]he director conjures an artful combination of the mundane and the poetic that suggest magic can be found just about anywhere.
Total Film
[With] floating notions about loneliness and urban beauty, frazzled adults and buffeted kids....Juliette Binoche is outstanding...
Entertainment Weekly
Rating: 3/4 --
The story of these people is certainly engaging. The conundrums of art and reality, of reflection and mirror images, presented by the movie are another matter - they seem at times gratuitous. But at least the movie does give us something to think about.
Full Review
Toronto Star
Product Description:
In 1956, Albert Lamorisse made THE RED BALLOON, a short in which a young boy, played by his son, makes friends with a red balloon. Some 50 years later, Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao Hsien has made his first French-language film, the charming and subtle FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON, commissioned by the Musée d'Orsay and inspired by Lamorisse's children's classic. A blonde Juliette Binoche stars as Suzanne, a single mother living in Paris, doing her best to raise her seven-year-old son, Simon (Simon Iteanu), while preparing her latest puppet show, based on the Yuan Dynasty story of Zhang Yu and his beloved, Qiong Lian. Suzanne hires Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese film student, to come to Paris to take care of Simon. Song goes everywhere with her camera, filming everything she sees. Meanwhile, Simon is being followed by a red balloon that has grown attached to the boy. The balloon, which seems to have its own personality, hovers over the boy and his family as Suzanne struggles with her daily life, fighting with tenants who owe back rent, moving a piano, and getting ready for the puppet show. Hou, the director of such widely acclaimed films as THE PUPPETMASTER, FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI, and CAFE LUMIERE, has created a touching, beautiful film in FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON, which opened the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was also selected for that year's New York Film Festival. Not only does the balloon serve as a character unto itself but so does the city of Paris as Song and Simon walk through the streets and ride the train. All the dialogue in the film is improvised, shot in long takes by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing; Hou provided each of the actors with the general scenario and back story and then had them fill in the dialogue and movement themselves, adding a natural authenticity to the film.
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Product Info
- UPC: 796019814751
- Shipping Weight: 0.25/lbs (approx)
- International Shipping: 1 item