During the period when my personal view of film was taking shape, I came into contact with the theory of film advocated by Bazin and was attracted by Laota's theory of directing. This film is considered a model of this type of film, and the artistic genius of director Hou Hsiao-hsien is undoubtedly revealed in it.
Binoche's mother was preoccupied and anxious from the very beginning, and she was a little neurotic when dealing with babysitters, sons, and almost everyone. I remember that she only laughed heartily twice, once in her memory, when she watched her son and daughter play together and took a picture of them; the other time was when she saw Master Ah Zhong performing a puppet . She always had a weird tone when she dubbed the puppets, imitating Chinese singing in French; she was full of emotions, she was serious about her work, and she loved her work.
Song Fang is an outsider most of the time, and she shows the true face of a female student living in Paris. In the film, she bears more of the ideographic system. As a Chinese, she is studying movies that originated in the West, while Binoche, as a French, is studying Chinese puppet shows; Binoche was studying in London when she was studying in London. She used to be a nanny, maybe she was what Song Fang is now. They are like two flowers in different time and space.
This film gave me a strong sense of immersion, and I seemed to be completely in this world during the viewing process, which is rare. Perhaps this is the charm of sensory movies, or the so-called "real movies". Use the real artistic image to use the finite to describe the infinite. The film captures a fragment of the family's life. This fragment is not the highlight of the protagonist's life or when the conflict was the most intense. It's just that their truest state is surging most intensely in it.
I can't figure out a context - nor should I, I can only say some of the most intense moments. Song Fang and the little boy were walking on the road talking, the little boy's voice was very low, Song Fang could only keep repeating what he just said; when Song Fang was picking up the little boy from school, a little girl noticed the camera and she waved to the camera , the camera quickly moved forward to avoid her; the mother asked someone to tune the piano, and each character did their own work in the whole process... In these details, the real time was engraved on the film.
After the film, I didn't want to think about all the technical aspects of the film, I didn't want to analyze its cinematography, script, lighting and sound...because it gave me an unusual meaning, and I watched it for more than an hour. It's like going back to my childhood. The mother quarreled with her ex-husband in the car, saying that she lacked a man by her side, and the little boy said that I was a man too; almost exactly the same thing happened in my childhood.
The little boy slept in the attic, the red balloon floated from the ceiling, the light shone, and the little boy covered his eyes with a bear.
While the little boy was playing games, there was a golden PS game console on the table. I have an exact same console. When I was seven years old to avoid SARS, my family went to Shanghai together. In a shop on the pedestrian street, my mother bought me this game console, and I played it a lot during my time in Shanghai. It was a gold limited edition PS, two thousand dollars.
In the short film "Red Balloon", the red balloon represents childhood, vitality and hope, and is the director's inspiration for the post-war mood. I believe Hou Hsiao-hsien here borrows the meaning of the red balloon for a child. It is dreamy, vivid and fragile, just like the influence in the glass. The double reflection of the glass and the scene behind the glass overlap, which is exactly what the memory looks like.
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