A review of "The Flight of the Red Balloon" — 13 weeks ago
Not sure who the intended audience is.
Being inspired by the original child’s movie….you would guess it was for children, however, it doesn’t look like it. It paints a picture of the modern child not being so different whether in France or America. The modern child is a dull loner who has no friends after school and entertains himself with a playstation. This child is not innocent or imaginative like I would expect. He is extremely bored.
Maybe the movie is for the children that grew up and are now parents. The outlook is bleak. Divorced mother, has a job she reasonably enjoys. Adults are stressed and can’t find things, they get upset. They are angry with friends and ex-husbands. Adults sometimes don’t clean up after themselves, lie to borrow things or not pay rent, and they make each other angry. Doesn’t look like a movie for children. Maybe it is painting on honest look of how bad adulthood can be.
The nanny never smiles and is rather rigid while pronouncing her French relatively well.(?) There is no chemistry in this movie between mother, child, sister, or nanny.
One thing we do get from this movie is the sense of how small space a French apartment is.
The highlight of the movie must be the puppet play. Juliette Binoche is extremely good with the voice acting of the Chinese story.
Another highlight must be the cinematography, the focus the camera gets in odd places like reflections of trees on the front windshield, focus on the rearview mirror, focus from the reflection of a framed painting.
Why are all the women wearing camisoles. Is this for the male audience. Binoche is especially underdressed when she first appears in the movie.
