“Plenty of well-meaning filmmakers advertise emotion without contextualizing it. Hou's latest film feels to me like a masterpiece responding intuitively to a masterpiece.” Michael Phillips - Chicago Tribune

“As if playing a serenely refined game, Hou transforms constraint into freedom -- which feels more to the point than any plotbound interpretation.”  Stewart Klawans - Nation

The reality is the hectic, troubled life of a single mother who runs a puppet theatre in Paris, whilst bringing up her pre-teen son with the help of his new Taiwanese nanny.  The fantasy is the red balloon which hovers over the young boy calling to mind the beloved 60s film The Red Balloon, and the artifice of the puppet play which is being rehearsed.  This is a French film, but made by one of the greats of modern Asian cinema, Hsiao-hsien Hou who has previously only made films in his native Taiwan.  The Musée d’Orsay, who sponsored this film (and three others), invited Hou to make a film, and he chose to make an oblique tribute to The Red Balloon.  The outsider is drawn in and we and the French mother and son at the centre of the story are drawn into the lives of the outsiders - the Taiwanese puppeteers and their extended family.  In the process their and our reality is transformed.

The film is measured but it never is ‘cute’ or sentimental.  Juliette Binoche gives another astonishing performance, transforming herself yet again into somebody else.  Hou’s regular cinematographer, Mark Lee Ping Bing weaves magic with his camera and the whole film captivates in a subtle and quiet way - like life itself.