By Wesley Morris to The Boston Globe

A year at the Yale School of Drama costs $25,735. Juilliard is about $1,500 more. And you don’t even want to know what an education from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art will set you back. For aspiring movie actors, it would be a lot cheaper just to study the career of Juliette Binoche. A week with her movies might not make you a better actor - although I don’t see how it couldn’t. But it may make you wiser about the acting you should aspire to do. Binoche is as good an example as we have of an actor who appreciates the realities of a flattening world. She works in her native France but not always for the French. The American film industry for her is a nice place to visit but not to live in. Binoche is acting globally. Read more… »

• Art of being Binoche

By Michael Phillips to Chicago Tribune

See here a video from Juliette talking about FOTRB

It sounds cliched, as does the nature of the film itself, but “Flight of the Red Balloon” is a gem made by a filmmaker who loves life, and knows how to capture its ebb and flow and sweet complication.

This quiet, patient masterwork comes from the Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien, here exploring two foreign territories: modern-day Paris, and the storybook Paris represented by the 1956 classic “The Red Balloon,” in which Albert Lamorisse delivered a hardy fable of childhood resistance. Juliette Binoche stars in “Flight of the Red Balloon,” but this is not a star vehicle. It is, rather, proof that largely improvised story, characters and dialogue can be approached with the kind of visual rigor and humanistic touch only a handful of contemporary cinema artists have to offer. Read more… »

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

Freep.com: After retro screenings of 1956’s “The Red Balloon” last season, the DFT now premieres “Flight of the Red Balloon” (***), a tribute to the old film and a subtle character study. Juliette Binoche stars as a Paris performance artist trying to balance work and motherhood while the title balloon appears as a curious observer. In French with English subtitles. Unrated; language. 1 hour, 54 minutes. 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Detroit Film Theatre at the DIA.

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

By Graham Fuller, Special to The Times

IN Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “The Flight of the Red Balloon,” the enigmatic title character wafts around Paris, boards a Metro and catches the attention of a little boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu). Though the relationship between boy and balloon in Albert Lamorisse’s 34-minute classic “The Red Balloon” (1956) was ardent, Simon’s interest in the scarlet bubble is no more than curious. Children have changed, Paris has changed and the new balloon, a passive rather than an active presence, is palpably forlorn compared with its predecessor.

“I use the red balloon as a kind of old soul,” Hou, 61, said recently through a translator. “It was a novelty for the little boy in the original film, but it’s less of one for the boy in my film. He has other distractions — piano lessons, video games. So the red balloon isn’t able to intervene. That’s my philosophy — I don’t believe intervention is possible. The structure of society is established. As a filmmaker, you can only come in as an observer.” Read more… »

• French Presses
• 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

The word most apt in describing Dan in Real Life is charming. Usually I’m not a fan of romantic comedies, but this film is a bit different than the usual fare. True, it is a story about a budding relationship, but told from the man’s perspective.

What is also refreshing about Dan in Real Life is that it is a romantic comedy for the 40-something set. Maybe I’m not knowledgeable enough about this genre to know any better, but I found the plot interesting as Dan has to deal with three teenage daughters while trying to get over the tragic death of his wife. Dan in Real Life is a smart comedy that put a lasting smile on my face. Read more… »

• Rendezvous at the cinema
• Binoche Slams American ‘Ageism’
• Binoche had to provide her own dialogue in ‘Flight of the Red Balloon’
• Vanity Fair scans
• Art of being Binoche