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Hou’s in Orsay
The great filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou (Café Lumiere, Millennium Mambo) is leaving the friendly confines of Thailand to film abroad for the first time in Paris. In Orsay, named after Musee d’Orsay, a young boy and his baby-sitter occupy the same dream world. Throughout their travels, presumably through the Musee d’Orsay, they’ll be pursued by a red balloon, an homage to the great French film Le Ballon Rouge. Juliette Binoche is signed on to play the boy’s mother.
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The great filmmaker Hsiao-hsien Hou (Café Lumiere, Millennium Mambo) is leaving the friendly confines of Thailand to film abroad for the first time in Paris. In Orsay, named after Musee d’Orsay, a young boy and his baby-sitter occupy the same dream world. Throughout their travels, presumably through the Musee d’Orsay, they’ll be pursued by a red balloon, an homage to the great French film Le Ballon Rouge. Juliette Binoche is signed on to play the boy’s mother.
The film will refocus one of Hou’s major themes, a rural childhood during the 1950s and 60s, in a more urban, European landscape. Considered one of the best filmmakers in the world today, expect some of Hou’s trademark nostalgia, mesmerizing long takes and landscapes, and elliptical editing style to flourish in this new environment. If you and your friends have a 2007 Cannes pool going, the safe bet would be film to taking home the Palme d’Or.
Evidently, Orsay is the new Paris, je t’aime. Orsay will be the first in a series of four individual films by four filmmakers (Hou, Olivier Assayas, Raoul Ruiz, and Jim Jarmusch) commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Musee d’Orsay. According to our friend Wikipedia, the Musee d’Orsay is the home of many of France’s greatest pieces of art, with lots of Monet, Manet, Degas, and all those other French painters with silent letters at the end of their names. Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone is also in attendance. Hopefully Jarmusch will utilize that painting in some capacity.
