Watch Flight of the Red Balloon For Free

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Too much of everything

Memorable, crazy movie

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

In Paris, the Chinese student of cinema Song Fang (Song Fang) is hired to work as the nanny of Simon (Simon Iteanu) by his divorced mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) that works dubbing marionettes in a theater. Suzanne is having troubles with her tenant Marc (Hyppolyte Girarddot) that does not pay the rent while she waits for the return of her older daughter Louise (Louise Margolin) that lives with her father in Brussels."Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge" is a pointless and boring movie about the quotidian life of a woman that dubs marionettes and lives alone with her beloved son. I cannot understand the hype surrounding this disappointing movie that goes nowhere, where the greatest excitement is when the workers move the piano to the upper floor and the greatest curiosity for those that have never played piano is when the technician tunes up the same piano. The pretentious director Hsiao-hsien Hou includes a red balloon to give the appearance of cult-movie to this forgettable flick that wastes the talented Juliette Binoche in a dull story. My vote is five.Title (Brazil): "A Viagem do Balão Vermelho" ("The Voyage of the Red Balloon")

There are two types of movie goers: those who can enjoy lyrical, poetic and/or artistic films and those who cannot. If you're part of the first group, more power to you; you'll love this movie. However, if you're like me, this movie represents everything that is wrong with so-called "art films." My hatred for this movie comes from the belief that movies are, or ought to be, entertainment. They should be visual novels, not moving paintings. That is why I cannot stand most art films. They try to be art, while entirely missing the point of cinema. Don't get me wrong; films can be art, but not in the same way a painting or a sculpture is art. Movies are art the way novels are art.Time to move on to this movie in particular.Plot: There is none. I also understand that there was not even a script for this film. I don't know if it's true or not, but it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest.Le Voyage du Balloon Rouge is more of a premise, that premise being everyone has a story to tell. While this is probably true, the makers could have easily come up with an even mildly interesting story to give the characters.In it's own way, this film is as every bit as shallow as the average summer popcorn flick. Summer popcorn flicks fill the screen with explosions and action scenes in the hope that no one will notice there's no story. This film uses the same tactic, replacing explosions for bright, colorful settings.Characters: Good movie characters are interesting and relatable. They don't even have to be likable. In fact, some of the best characters aren't truly likable.The characters of Voyage are not interesting, but oddly relatable, in an a way I'm sure the actors never intended. We've all gone through times in our life where we we feel nothing is happening in our lives. I'm sure none of us would care to watch movies about those experiences, either.Cinematography: I try to give credit where credit's due. This is a beautiful film to look at and listen to. It is truly a lovely moving painting with a build in musical score.Overall: My initial reaction to this movie was a one star-rating. However, now I've taken a step back, I give this film three stars.

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 François 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

Flight of the Red Balloon may be the most mundane movie I've ever seen. This is one of those slice-of-life movies in which there is no strong story line to move things forward. Most of the movie is about ordinary, everyday events that have only the barest hint of drama. In one typical scene, the characters spend several minutes discussing how many pancakes they want to eat. Like the Seinfeld TV show, this is a movie about nothing, but it lacks Seinfeld's witty, intelligent dialog. What the characters say here is just as mundane as what they do. These ordinary scenes drag on forever too. If the director had edited the movie down to maybe 45 minutes, the result might have been pleasant and mildly-entertaining. But as it stands, you can hardly stay awake to watch. Granted, the actors are good, but sadly they don't have much material to work with. And by the way, the director's use of the red balloon makes no sense. The balloon (inexplicably) follows the boy around in the beginning and the end of the movie. But in between, the balloon is nowhere to be seen except, paradoxically, in a few brief scenes as a prop in the nanny's home movie. The red balloon almost appears to have been added as an afterthought, to pay homage to the classic 1956 movie, The Red Balloon.