Look, here is a promise from me to you: There is no more better way to spend 34 minutes of your time tonight than sitting down and (re)watching The Red Balloon.
The featurette begins with a boy who finds this new floating friend on the way to school one day, then follows their exploration of Paris for the afternoon. From the moment he scales a lamppost to fetch it—freeing it from a knot at the top then resourcefully sticking the string between his teeth to get back down again—it’s clear these two are going to be buddies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqyVB7G5W0
When it was released in 1956 it won a Palme D’Or at Cannes and an Oscar for Best Writing (Original Screenplay)—an impressive feat considering the whole thing is nearly dialogue-free. It’s beautifully shot and so so so so so wonderfully, refreshingly simple. Plus it’s fascinating to see how much personality director Albert Lamorisse was able to instill in the inanimate headliner; with a few tugs of some invisible wire rigging the red balloon is given a life of its own, minus any kind of wacky anthropomorphizing or cutesy character development.
I won’t spoil the ending but this pre-Up fantasy flick is probably going to take you on an emotional helium ride in the wind: up, then down, then up again. [Netflix, Youtube]
