Trailers (Due to age, may no longer be available)

Posters (Due to age, may no longer be available)

Poster Rating: C+

Review: This poster is quite a bit cluttered. While it’s important to set the film in Paris, the window view is hardly an eye-catching vantage point. The titular balloon is too aggresively placed and, though a dominant part of the story, it should still be viewed from more of a distance.

Trailer Rating: B+

Review: When I first saw the title, I knew there was a connection to the famed dialogue-less film The Red Balloon, the only such film to win a screenwriting Oscar. However, I just expected a remake or similar retread considering the modern penchant for such things. However, the trailer does very little to suggest more than this film is a sort of “follow-up” to the original and has very little to do with it. The producers were even smart enough to note that it was inspired by that original film. It could be interesting, there are some significant cultural and social questions poised in the few scenes featured in the trailer and any film with Juliette Binoche deserves some amount of consideration.

Oscar Prospects:

An early year release won’t put this one easily on the Oscar map. But it is the kind of film that might resurrect France’s flagging Foreign Language film bids. After Persepolis failed to make the final five last year and the recent losses of Amelie and Joyeux Noel, the former far more likely a winner than the latter, it would be nice to see the country’s film industry, generally considered one of the foremost in the world, make a mark again.

Release Date:

April 4, 2008

Page Revisions:

March 9, 2008 – Original
April 6, 2008 – New Poster