Young Simon is talking to a big red balloon on a Paris street. His nanny Song Fang is a Chinese film student. His mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) is struggling to put on a marionette play, struggling with her tenant, and struggling in general.
This pulls its inspiration from The Red Balloon (1956). While that short is full of magical charms, this one isn't quite that. It's reverential but I almost want everybody to shut up. Simon talking to balloon is such a magical conceit. That's what I want for the movie. Maybe I'm too strident with what I expected from this film.
6.5Plot summary
In Paris, Chinese cinema student Song Fang is hired to work as the nanny of Simon by his divorced mother Suzanne, who works voicing marionettes in a theater. Suzanne is having troubles with her tenant Marc, who does not pay the rent, while she waits for the return of her older daughter Louise, who lives with her father in Brussels.
Uploaded by: FREEMAN
Director
Top cast
Juliette Binoche as Suzanne
Movie Reviews
Reviewed by
magic
Reviewed by
Good but it didn't strike me as great
Feature length homage/companion to the classic short film The Red Balloon concerns a single mother, her son and the new nanny. The tale follows their lives and the red balloon that periodically makes an appearance in it.
Forgive me for being brief and lacking details but this movie didn't click with me. Yes its beautiful, yes its well acted and containing some wonderful bits of dialog and yes the Balloon is magical, bu the film didn't click with me. Just over a half hour in as the son is having a piano lesson I began to drift away mentally. a little while later when the cats and the dig attacked me and insisted I feed them I did do while I let the film play on (its on IFC in Theaters). It may click for you, but it didn't so so for me.
If you're interested give it a shot.
Reviewed by
You know, grownups are a bit complicated.
Oscar winner Juliette Binoche (The English Patient, Chocolat, Caché) is a pleasure to watch. In this film she plays a harried mother with her flying blond hair symbolizing the mess of her life as she tries to raise a young son, with a husband off in Montreal writing and a daughter in Brussels. Life is not easy as she tries balancing 10 things at once. But, isn't that what we all go through? She hires a Chinese film student (Fang Song in her film debut) to watch her child, Simon, (Simon Iteanu, also in his first film).
Acclaimed writer/director Hsiao-hsien Hou doesn't bother with plot in this film, and I am given to understand that much of the dialog was extemporaneous. It is a credit to Binoche and the others that is gives us a picture of French life.
The film is purported to be an homage to Albert Lamorisse's 1956 short, The Red Balloon. In this film, the balloon floats in and out of the story without apparent contribution to what is going on. It is not the balloon that becomes a friend and companion to the boy, but the nanny.
It is particularly French - a slow film requiring much patience to appreciate.