Flight of the Red Balloon

Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien

2007 / 115min / 35mm

The city this time is Paris—the first time that Hou has shot a film outside of Asia—seen in this tender tribute to Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon (1956)featuring Juliette Binoche as a puppeteer and the mother of a young son (Simon Iteanu) whose Taiwanese nanny (Song Fang) takes the boy to visit the scenes of Lamorisse’s movie, along the way finding that they’re being followed by a bobbing balloon. Wistful and wonderful and, per critic J. Hoberman, “a movie of genius.”