The Flight of the Red Balloon (2008)
79 %
Reviews Counted: 70 Fresh: 55 Rotten:15 Average Rating: 6.8/10
Consensus:
Hou Hsiao-hsien's remake of the 1956 classic is unhurried, contemplative, and visually rapturous.
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Theatrical Release: Apr 4, 2008 Limited
Synopsis: 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... [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu, Hippolyte Girardot, Song Fang, Louise Margolin
Director: Hou Hsaio-Hsien
Screenwriter: Hou Hsaio-Hsien, Francois Margolin
Producer: Francois Margolin
Composer: Camille, Constance Lee
Screenwriter: Hou Hsaio-Hsien, Francois Margolin
Producer: Francois Margolin
Composer: Camille, Constance Lee
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Reviews
Comment
A winsome homage to Albert Lamorisse's classic children's fantasy short film of 1956 The Red Balloon.
08/02/08
There’s no editing within a scene, no close-ups. No incidental music. Just life, or a pretty accurate simulation of life.
07/11/08
Lamorisse's film was a third of this length, and was lighter than air. Hou's is about the weight of air itself on a muggy day, and whether that sustains over 113 minutes will be between each viewer and his attention span.
06/23/08
Top Critic
The slow-moving Red Balloon really doesn't stack up favorably with its obvious inspiration, the delightful 1956 short fantasy The Red Balloon.
06/12/08
In a film that feels so unstructured, these scenes reveal how much craft and structure actually go into Hou's films, how he endows his film with such meticulous layering of themes and ideas.
06/08/08
Even when [Hou is] working with simple ingredients, he brings along his masterful sense of space, timing, and everyday observation, which gives an actress like Binoche ample room to shine.
06/03/08
I fear many viewers may lose patience. But those who stay to the end of this delicate and beautiful film will be amply rewarded.
05/30/08
It’s all humdrum and low key without any redeeming compositional elegance or symmetry.
05/29/08
Miraculously avoids leaden 'significance' in favor of a sagacious lived-in-ness.
05/23/08
Many will become irritated and bored; watching eggs being cracked for pancakes could be riveting to watch, but not here.
05/22/08
If you're patient enough, an affecting melancholy seeps through. Some scenes are maddeningly vague, but others wonderful and mysterious, capturing a child's plaintive wide-eyed perspective for a few gorgeous, fleeting moments.
05/21/08
All suggestion and no imposition, a subtle meditation on how we position ourselves in space, and to what end.
05/17/08
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.
05/16/08
Top Critic
Ultimately, it's hard not to feel like Hou is saying more explicitly and expansively in nearly two hours what Lamorisse managed to convey in only one-fourth as much film.
05/16/08
Who knows? You might be in the mood for a slowly unspooling objet d'art filmique with flashes of brilliance in composition and framing. Or you might want to see Iron Man again.
05/16/08
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.
05/16/08
Top Critic
Hou's first film made outside of Asia is his most emotionally turbulent, yet he remains, like the balloon, outside looking in, a compassionate but distant observer...
05/03/08
More often than not, the red balloon appears as a silent, benevolent witness to ethereal moments that [director] Hou has taken great care to capture.
05/02/08
Related Forums
(2008 USA release)-Hou Hsiao Hsien's FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON opens April 4th in NYC
by: ReelReviewer.com 4/16
by: ReelReviewer.com 4/16
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