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The Red Balloon Journey

The Red Balloon Journey

Drama, Family

Hou Hsiao-hsien

Juliette Binoche, Song Fang, Hippolyte Girardot

2007

France, Taiwan, China

Film review analysis↗

Completed

French, Mandarin Chinese

115 minutes

2025-03-02 14:36:08

Detailed introduction

This film (drama)Also known asLe voyage du ballon rouge,is aFrance, Taiwan, ChinaProducerwomen sex,At2007Released in year 。The dialogue language isFrench, Mandarin Chinese,Current Douban rating7.4(For reference only)。
This film is a tribute by Hou Hsiao-hsien to French director Albert Lamorisse, whose short film "The Red Balloon (Le Ballon Rouge)" from 1956 holds an important place in film history. It is also his second tribute foreign-language film after "Cafe Lumiere." Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) is overwhelmed with the voice acting for a character in a puppet show adapted from Chinese Yuan drama titled "The Sea Man's Wife" and other matters. With her husband Pierre writing a novel far away in Montreal, Canada, her son Simon (Simon Iteanu) has become a "burden." Reluctantly, she hires a Chinese girl named Song (Song Fang), who is studying film in Paris, to take care of Simon. While with Simon, Song is never far from her camera, and she mentions "The Red Balloon" to a curious Simon about what she is filming. Suzanne’s tenant Marc (Hippolyte GirardotLouise), relying on being Pierre’s friend, often does things that anger her, and he has not paid rent for months, citing poverty. Suzanne has the intention to bring her daughter Louise (Louise Margolin) back from Brussels to study in Paris and decides to evict Marc, but Pierre does not understand. Song, who observes everything but does not get involved in such trivial matters, maintains a distant friendship with Suzanne, mostly thinking about her film: the process of Simon discovering a big red balloon that no one pays attention to and pulling it through the streets and alleys of Paris, which she captures on camera, becoming a film within the film. Afterward, the red balloon seems to have a life of its own, floating around wherever Simon appears.