Le voyage du ballon rouge

English Title: Flight of the Red Balloon
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Country: France

At the beginning of this movie, a boy (Simon Iteanu) follows a red balloon but soon gives up. However, the balloon doesn't seem to give up following him. It seems that because of this, we get a glimpse of lives of Simon and his family.

I didn't really enjoy this one. This was probably due to the fact that it was more or less a non-story. It showed a fragment of the life of Simon, Suzanne (his mother, played by Juliette Binoche), and Song (Song Fang), his baby babysitter. I suppose you could say that the flight of the red balloon is a chaotic and unpredictable one, something that is mirrored by the lives of these people, but you really couldn't care by the end of it, as it moves along far too slowly.

Fans of Hou Hsiao-hsien may like this. As might fans of artsy French movies. I can't really say for certain, as I didn't quite get what the movie was trying to do.