Le voyage du ballon rouge

Art of a very high order, Hsiao-hsein Hao directs the Musee d'Orsay commissioned "The Flight of the Red Balloon", a stand-alone film paying homage to the Lamorisse's 1956 film favorite "The Red Balloon". Directed with class and elegance, although stumbles in indulgent overextended shots and pacing problems, it pays dividends to the patient as we are welcomed into a claustrophobic apartment inhabited by a mother and son struggling to come to grips with a marital separation. The film knows its audience and it caters to them loyally, however won't convert any non-believers.

Although not explicit, the sense of chaos is however present right from the point where we enter Suzanne and Simon's apartment in Paris. Clearly not in control of her marital and maternal situation, she drowns herself in work as a puppet show narrator where she can control the fantastic as opposed to her real and disorganized state. Enter Song, a film student who acts as Simon's surrogate as his mother deals with this transitional process.

The film's screenplay is as light as a helium balloon, we enter their micro-cosmos through Song, almost this film's allegory towards the original's red balloon as its voyeuristic anchor – nonjudgmental and omnipresent. Although certain scenes clearly leads to nowhere, they are nonetheless welcome as it highlights the reality of the situation and also the characters' desire to reach back to normal. It is clear here, Suzanne desires a somewhat 'normal' family life: almost pleading for her eldest daughter to move back to Paris and for his ex-husband's friend/tenant to leave the property. A daughter of divorce, she knows it is imperative that a routine has to be established.

The way Hao films this, it has this odd certain detachment towards the characters, almost a "Wings of Desire" approach, static camera in tow. We see a single mother in despair but the audience isn't allowed to feel anything about it: almost factual. Binoche personifies Suzanne with a quiet dignity and pride that her devastation is disallowed to be brought to the surface, but of course, when things build up to a boil, we can sense her immediate discomfort and frustration.

What seems like a nonchalant Simon, he is clearly affected too, as he can't even distinguish his own family tree, to the effect that even the audience can be driven to confusion. He becomes distant to his own mother, finding solace through nostalgia with a long summer with his sister. He and Suzanne's relationship is also obviously affected, as most of the film, they indulge in small talk and when the mother desires for an eye to eye contact, he looks away.

The decision to film this in a calming atmosphere as opposed to the chaos in the characters' is a smart idea: it highlights the juxtaposition even more. As opposed to the Lamorisse classic, the maternal figure here is in focus. The film works within its parameters and Hao does not belittle its audience – of course, only to those willing to be engulfed by it.

There are 4 different reasons for making me enjoy the movie. First is the wonderful way most of the actors play their roles. Juliet excels in the way she perform the liberal free women, sensitive and caring mother. Also other player, including Juliet son, made me feel very convinced and comfort with their roles.

An extra ordinary job made the art director. The interior design of the flat, where most of the scenes took place, gave me an exact feeling of an old European flat inhabited with very vivid characters. I could almost sense the smells of the different spots in the apartment like the small dining room (the table), the kitchen and the living room.

Walking through the street of Paris gave me the feeling of a day off out of the office without any specific plans or duties. For me it's the best way for relaxation and that how I felt watching the movie.

Last but not least, happiness can be found in small apparently non important issues. There is plenty of that type of items spread around the scene like fixing the piano, information regarding the child progress at school.

In CAFE LUMIERE, Hou paid tribute to Ozu. Here it's Lamorisse and his famous short film. I liked this more than any other Hou I've seen so far, which is odd because it seems to be considered one of his lesser films. Perhaps I only like Hou when he's not being so Hou. There was a lot to decode here, but I think one of the primary messages is the meeting of two cultures. The red balloon could be associated with the red prominent in Chinese culture, floating through and discovering Paris much in the same way as the director himself. The balloon seems to watch over and sympathize with the characters but doesn't ever connect. We have Juliette Binoche (in a very warm and relateable performance) practicing the art of Chinese puppet theater, and in her employ is Fang Song (another very likable performer), a Chinese nanny. These characters interact and even have moments of tenderness together, but they are detached, not quite involved in each other's lives. And then there are multitudes of instances being seen through windows, in reflections, through a camera, on a screen, via a child's toy. We are separated, but I see you and watch you with care. Outsiders looking in, doing what they can. I enjoyed my time with these characters and was engaged with their situations, understated though they might be. Lovely photography by one of my favorites, Mark Ping Bin Lee, and a gentle score. Makes me wonder what I've missed in Hou's other films.

Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao Hsien just made a film in Japan, 'Café Lumiere.' This, his first foray out of Asia to make a film, was commissioned by the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. It's a precise study of the quotidian, and since that quotidian is in Paris, it's particularly graceful and lovely, despite the themes of urban loneliness and stress, which seem to grow seamlessly out of the last film into this one. It's about a frazzled lady named Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) with over-bleached, unruly hair. Her life is a little like her coiffure—she can't quite seem to control it. She has a seven-year-old boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu), with a fine profile and a big mop of hair, and an annoying downstairs lodger (Hipolyte Girardot), a friend of her absent boyfriend, who, it emerges, hasn't paid his rent in a year. Suzanne's work is unusual. She puts on Chinese puppet plays, for which she does all the voices. As the film begins, she picks up Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese girl studying film-making, fluent in French, who is going to be a "child minder" for Simon. And then she picks up Simon at school, introduces them, and takes them to the apartment.

The Musee d'Orsay lent Hou a copy of Albert Lamorisse's 1956 classic 34-minute short 'The Red Balloon.' This is a kind of homage to and riff on it. There's a big red balloon that keeps following Simon. Song also starts shooting a little film of Simon with a red balloon.

Hou admits he didn't know a lot about Paris. Somehow he got hold of a copy of Adam Gopnik's book about the city, 'Paris to the Moon,' an enlightening and truly smart study of the French and their capital that grew out of the years when Gopnik was The New Yorker's correspondent there—when he also had young a little boy along. From Gopnik Hou learned about how old Parisian cafes still have pinball machines ('flippers', the French call them). He also learned that the merry-go-round in the Jardin du Luxembourg has little rings the children catch on sticks as they ride around (like knights in the days of jousting). Hou put both those things in his movie. He says that once he had Simon's school and Suzanne's apartment, the film was safely under way. He provided a very detailed scenario (penned by Hou with co-writer and producer François Margolin) complete with full back stories, but the actors had to decide what to say in each of their scenes. They did, quite convincingly.

Hou's life has been full of puppets from childhood, and he made a film about a puppet master. This time he incorporates a classic Chinese puppet story about a very determined hero: he meant it to describe Suzanne, who creates a new version of it. He also brings in a visiting Chinese puppet master. Suzanne calls in Song to act as interpreter for the puppet master during his visit, and also asks her to transfer some old family films to disk. The lines between filmmaker and story, actors and their characters, blur at times.

Flight may be seen as a contrast of moods. That tenant downstairs has become a real annoyance. Simon's father has been away as a writer in residence at a Montreal university for longer than he planned. These two things are enough to make Suzanne fly off the handle whenever she comes home. But Song and Simon are calm souls, and they hit it off from the start. With Simon, all is going well. He's happy with his young life. Math, spelling, flipper, wandering Paris with Song, catching the rings at the Jardin du Luxembourg, taking his piano lessons: the world according to Simon is full and good. Suzanne hugs Simon as if to draw comfort from his love and his serenity.

Hou has a wonderfully light touch. Changes of scene feel exactly right. The red balloon and the occasional judiciously placed pale yellow filter by Hou's DP Mark Lee Ping Bing make the Parisian interiors seem almost Chinese, and beautiful in their cozy clutter. Let's not forget that red is the luckiest color in Chinee culture.

You could say that nothing really happens in Hou's red balloon story. Like other auteur-artist filmmakers, he requires patience of his audience. But nothing in particular has to happen, because he stages his scenes with such grace and specificity that it's a pleasure to watch them unfold; a lesson in life lived for its zen here-and-now-ness. Occasionally perhaps here the absence of emotional conflicts or suspense leads to momentary longeurs, but one's still left feeling satisfied. Clever Hou, who is clearly a master of seizing the moment, can make you feel as much at home in Paris as any French director. Though Flight of the Red Balloon may generate little excitement, it provides continual aesthetic pleasure, and at the same time has the feel of daily life in every scene. This is a method that can incorporate anything, so at the end the Musee d'Orsay is easily worked in, through Simon's class coming for a visit and looking at a painting by Félix Vallotton—of a landscape with a red balloon. It's in the nature of good film acting that Binoche's character, though sketched in only with a few brief scenes, seems quite three-dimensional. This is Hou at his most accessible, but there is more solidity to this film than might at first appear.

An official selection of the New York Film Festival 2007. ©Chris Knipp 2007

Watched at the Toronto International Film Festival, with a personal appearance by Juliette Binoche, a favourite guest of the TIFF.

Those who have watched "The red balloon" (1956) will never forget it. "Flight of the Red Balloon", Hou's Hsiao-hsien's second foreign language (i.e. non-Chinese) film, is not a remake of this all-time classic. Rather, Hou's film pays tribute to it, as well as borrows from it the obvious motif.

Those who have watched his first foreign language film Japanese "Cafe Lumiere" (2003) would recognize Hou's unassuming style: slow, languid pace visually; complete silence to dreamy piano in the audio department. This film actually already has more "action" (for want of a better word) than most of Hou's other films. Wandering nonchalantly around various slices of daily life of a simple family in Paris, the film starts with Song (Fang Song), a film student from Beijing, taking up a post as nanny of little kid Simon (Simon Iteanu) whose divorced mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche) is a busy actress.

Revolving around the three principle characters, the film depicts various things – alternatively amusing, frustrating, touching, mundane, inspiring – at that particular time in their lives: Song and Simon getting to know each other, Suzanne's interesting current assignment of supplying all spoken dialogue in a puppetry theatre (how wonderfully Binoche does that!), hassles with an irresponsible basement tenant, Song's self-initiated project of filming a "red balloon" sequence with Simon as the subject, Simon's longing for his loving elder sister currently sojourning in Brussels, and more.

It is through sharing with them their simple daily lives rather than earth-shattering emotional turmoil that we come to know and care for these characters. In Hou's usual unassuming style, meticulous attention is given to simple details, things so simple that a crafty Hollywood screen-writer wouldn't dream of writing. Example. Suzanne brings home an armful of grocery as presents and, in high spirit, dumps them on the kitchen table, hitting the overhead lamp with the upswing of her arm. Completely as-a-matter-of-course, little Simon says, "Mind the lamp". Example. Two workmen, after a tough negotiation with the staircase, succeed in moving a piano upstairs, during which time Song and Simon wait patiently downstairs. As the workmen, after a friendly chat with Suzanne and receiving their fee, walk out of the door, Song walks in, carrying the piano stool. Suzanne exclaims, "Oh, I've forgotten all about the piano stool!"

Going back to the title, the red balloon, as mentioned, is used as a recurring motif, not too frequently, but just at the right moments to punctuate the mood of the film. This is vintage Hou and brilliant Pinoche, except to those few who walked out of the TIFF screening, obviously out of boredom (and at Cannes early this year too, from a review I've read). But then there are always a few of those.