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Flight of the Red Balloon
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| Year: |
2007
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Director: |
Hou Hsiao Hsien
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| Stars: |
Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu, Song Fang, Hippolyte Girardot, Louise Margolin, Anna Sigalevitch, Charles-Edouard Renault, Damien Maestraggi
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| Genre: |
Drama |
| Rating: |
  6 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
From his breakthrough docudrama The Puppet Master (1993) to the lyrical Three Times (2005), Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao Hsien admirably resists being pigeon-holed. His latest, a French language drama, pays tribute to Albert Lamorisse’s classic children’s film The Red Balloon (1956). Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) is a puppeteer who uses her vocal talents to bring her self-penned shows to life. A single mother struggling to raise her seven year old son Simon (Simon Iteanu), Suzanne decides to hire Taiwanese film student Song Fang (playing herself) as a nanny. Between caring for the little boy, Song crafts her own short film tribute to the Lamorisse classic, while a mysterious red balloon affectionately follows Simon around Paris.
As a narrative, Flight of the Red Balloon is hard to evaluate. Warm, likeable but often needlessly obtuse, this low-key drama requires a patient viewer able to weave together the snippets of story lain here and there. Suzanne bemoans her absent lover and her daughter. Song assembles her film. Song assembles her film. Simon dreams of his much missed sister, while the red balloon watches silently over them all. Assembled as a collage with key characters reappearing in different contexts, sometimes through different moments in time. As a writer Hou develops a complete script but has his actors invent their own dialogue to fit the situation. The end result is a realism unique in cinema since it avoids the misery-laden melodramatics of the kitchen sink school in favour of simple, quiet lives that most people lead. It often feels as though we are eavesdropping on stolen moments from private lives - much like the red balloon itself. Hou has a keen eye for the minutiae of everyday life: bills, meals, subdued antipathy (although we never uncover the source of tension between Suzanne and her neighbours), petty arguments and tender moments between mother and son, brother and sister, and even strangers. The friendship that slowly blossoms between Suzanne and Song Fang is understated, but winning all the same.
Binoche is strong as always. While Hou is sometimes vague about Suzanne’s troubles, Binoche’s face exhibits the pressures single mothers face in daily life. Welcome scenes from Suzanne’s puppet show tell of Zhang Yu, a scholar who tries to boil away the ocean to retrieve his missing lover. Hou draws parallels between this popular Taiwanese fable and Suzanne’s own emotional crisis. Youngster Simon Iteau displays a charmingly naturalistic charisma, well captured by Hou’s unobtrusive directing style (At one point a little girl wanders into shot, yells “Bonjour!” and waves at the camera). Song Fang - one of Hou’s own students at the Asian Film Academy - maintains a serene presence, but her character remains something of an enigma. The balloon’s significance is a similar mystery. While this has interesting moments, it is ultimately less rewarding than Lamorisse’s film, which is a genuine classic.
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| Reviewer: |
Andrew Pragasam
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