Le Voyage du ballon rouge (2007) - film review

Fully occupied with her marionette show, single mother Susanne hires a Taiwanese student, Song Fang, to look after her young children, Simon and Louise.   The seven year-old Simon develops a particularly close bond with Song Fang, and as the two walk the streets of Paris they imagine they are being followed by a mysterious red balloon...

Intended as a respectful homage to Albert Lamorisse’s classic 1956 short film Le Ballon rouge, Le Voyage du ballon rouge was commissioned by the Musée d’Orsay in Paris as part of a series of films to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its opening.  It was directed by the highly acclaimed Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien, his first French language film and only the second film to be made outside his home country (the first being Café Lumière, shot in Japan in 2003).  Hsien’s characteristic use of long takes and penchant for beautifully balanced composition give the film a distinctive visual quality, but unfortunately this does not compensate for the lack of narrative content.  Whilst the film is visually alluring and succeeds in melding naturalism and poetry, it feels frustratingly vacuous and looks like something ambling blindly in the no-mans land between documentary and social drama, lacking both narrative thrust and believable characters that an audience can engage with.  Juliette Binoche’s presence does more harm than good, as her portrayal of a stressed parent is neither endearing nor particularly convincing.   It is true that Le Voyage du ballon rouge has something of the indefinable whimsical charm of Lamorisse’s film but it has none of that earlier film’s coherence and emotional pull.  A disappointing effort.

© James Travers 2010

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