Hou set up the passionate past of the Sartre era in 1968 for the single mother drama worker Binoche. After the failure of love, he wanted to entrust his children to his father, but his father was ill, so he had to live alone in Paris with his seven-year-old son Simon. The specific background of this character setting does not appear in the film, but it becomes the best footnote to Binoche's passion in puppet show work and the sincerity of intellectual women to life. Song Fang, a film student from Beijing, is studying in Paris and earning a little money as a nanny after school. Her appearance is simple and indifferent from beginning to end, thin and independent like a young girl in "Coffee Time". One is a single mother and the other is a part-time nanny. The two meet at this point. Starting at Simon's point, the story unfolds on the plane of "now". A little bit of memory is revealed inadvertently, just like our life, the memory is still dripping from the gap of reality, and it is lost. Simon's memories include his sister who took him to a coffee shop to drink juice when he was a child, and Charles Aznavour sang Emmenez Moi on the jukebox, "Take me away". The father who did not attend, one year old or two years old, took him to the game room to learn pinball, which continues to this day. Binoche's memory is two home videos and a shutter release. No one knows whether she was so affectionate in "Zhang Sheng Cooking the Sea", whether it was because she missed her life in the drama.
"Zhang Sheng Boils the Sea" was brought to Paris by puppet master Ah Zhong, and Binoche learned Chinese singing. Song Fang always carried DVs to record the red balloons in the name of tribute, which obviously echoes the cultural exchanges in the transnational era. The tide is coming together, but the more ingenious is actually the ending song Tchin Tchin. Chinese audiences will know that it is adapted from Tsai Qin, "The Forgotten Time" that appeared in "Infernal Affairs"! Camille's version has a title at the end: chin chin, a toi mon ballon rouge... Celebrating time with time, remembering across oceans fifty years later, art will live forever.
The post-impression drawing near the end of the film is by Félix Vallotton (1865-1925), and the theme is also a child and a red balloon. At the turn of the century, the Western modern painting world was influenced by a school of oriental-style Ukiyo-e, which did not pay attention to depth of field, perspective and light and darkness, but focused on color, plane impression and situation. The teacher asked, what is the perspective of this painting? It seems to be looking down from a height, and it seems to be looking at it from the sidelines. Like the red balloon in the movie. Does it express happiness or sadness? The lawn is half bright and half shaded, sometimes happy and sometimes sad. It is for "The Journey of the Red Balloon", which is about childhood and seeing life for the first time.
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