Flight of the Red Balloon
Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Written by Hou Hsiao-hsien and François Margolin. With Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu and Fang Song. (Unrated)

Obviously there’s just something about French-language films on American movie screens that makes us swoon. Consider the impunity with which they make a sport of our beloved narrative conventions. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s all-but plotless Flight of the Red Balloon, for instance, offers a rare form of suspense, encouraging us to wonder whether anything is actually going to happen in it.

The answer: nope, not really. Neither a sequel nor a remake of Albert Lamorisse’s perennially kid-pleasing 1956 short The Red Balloon, Hou’s film plays as leisurely hovering, ambient homage: a bloom of quiet mirth in the graceful state of childhood. It makes fine use of a drowsy-eyed seven-year-old Parisian boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu) and of the sense, as in Lamorisse’s film, that a balloon is somehow looking after him. Read more… »

• Binoche had to provide her own dialogue in ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’
• Bonjour Binoche
• ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’ — 4 stars!
• ‘Red Balloon’ lands again at DFT
• Still red, still a balloon, but so different

Juliette Binoche, introducing “Flight of the Red Balloon” to audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, described the project as a “life-changing experience.”

A tad dramatic maybe, but hey, she’s an actress.

The next day, as she prepared to introduce another of her movies at the festival - Amos Gitai’s “Disengagement” - Binoche elaborated.

“I had never experienced such complete trust from a director,” she said, referring to Hou Hsiao Hsien, the Taiwanese filmmaker who took the 1956 children’s cinema classic “The Red Balloon” and, well, flew with it in his improvisational, slice-of-Parisian-life homage.

“There was a script, but it had no dialogue - none,” Binoche recalled with a hearty laugh during an interview in Toronto. “There were discussions about the story, but that was it. On the set, Hou just trusted us … and now and then he would supply some facts that you needed to know to follow the story. And I was overwhelmed by that. I thought it was so generous.” Read more… »

• French Presses
• Bonjour Binoche
• ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’ — 4 stars!
• ‘Red Balloon’ lands again at DFT
• Still red, still a balloon, but so different

French star is a one-take wonder in Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s uplifting homage to Paris

BY Jason Anderson
Working in France (and outside of Asia) for the first time, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien couldn’t have made a more appropriate casting decision than Juliette Binoche. Besides being one of world cinema’s most famous faces for two decades, Binoche remains uncommonly adventurous for such a major star. Hollywood projects such as Chocolat and Dan in Real Life are outnumbered on her CV by films with some of the world’s most revered directors, Binoche having followed indelible early performances for Leos Carax and Krzysztof Kieslowski with more recent turns for Michael Haneke (Caché), Abel Ferrara (Mary) and Abbas Kiarostami (the forthcoming The Certified Copy).
But even after all those experiences, working with Hou on Flight of the Red Balloon — which starts a two-week run at the Royal this weekend — presented particular challenges. Like most of his films, Hou’s first European-made feature is dominated by lengthy scenes in which the characters gradually reveal themselves in tiny, subtle increments. Read more… »

• French Presses
• Binoche had to provide her own dialogue in ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’
• ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’ — 4 stars!
• ‘Red Balloon’ lands again at DFT
• Still red, still a balloon, but so different

French actress Juliette Binoche once counted Francois Mitterand among her admirers - the late President famously approached her in a restaurant and asked her to be his mistress [For the record, Binoche declined]. So was Binoche also among the number of high-profile French women that the newly divorced President Sarkozy (right) was rumoured to have his eye on before he met model-turned-singer Carla Bruni at a dinner party?

It hardly seems likely given the actress’s recent comments in interviews to promote her latest movie, a Disney romcom Dan in Real Life co-starring Steve Carrell. Binoche, who earlier this year told a Spanish website that Nicolas Sarkozy was a “new Napoleon” said this weekend that she was “ashamed” of France’s new president. “I feel ashamed about Sarkozy for France,” she told the Daily Mail’s You magazine. “I do feel ashamed having a president like that.”

Binoche, covering her hands in horror, went on: “It’s a monarchy - he is a republican monarch, as I see it, making his own decisions without consulting his government.” [Source]

• Binoche Slams American ‘Ageism’

French actress Juliette Binoche has criticized the American concept of beauty, insisting people in the U.S. only value “youth and big breasts.”

The Oscar winner, 44, is convinced older women are more accepted in her native France, whereas in America, most females over the age of 40 are not considered beautiful.

And the star is horrified by the number of actresses undergoing cosmetic surgery in a bid to keep their youthful looks.

She says, “Personally I’ve always thought French women bloom at 40 and for me it’s completely true. In France, beauty is much more subtle, and there is a greater acceptance of age.

“Whereas in America, they think youth and big breasts define beauty. We think it’s more about looking after yourself than going down the artificial route.

“Botox makes people look older. You look at women who have had it, you see the fear of aging on their face.”

Source: SFGate.com

• Binoche: I’m ‘ashamed’ of President Sarkozy