Our articles about the LA-based pop band “Lights Over Paris” have attracted a lot of attention. Read the articles below to see why.
Flight of the Red Balloon
Hey, balloon! Come here. Are you coming?
Come on. Are you listening?
If you come… I’ll give you something.
Something bigger than you can imagine.
I’ll give you a hundred candies. Two million caramel bars.
Anything you want if you come.
It’s not listening.
Balloon, are you coming or not? You heard me.
So you’re coming with me?
One more time. Are you coming back to my place or not?
No answer. So that’s a “no.”
You’re so stupid.
So begins Flight of the Red Balloon, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s 2007 film, inspired in part and paying homage to Albert Lamorisse’s The Red Balloon — a film that, with any luck, Doc Salvatron and I will be discussing next week. I haven’t yet seen the original, but from what I’ve read it seems to be about childhood innocence, friendship and love. HHH’s feature length expansion updates those themes in a modern context, making the film about something more sad, fleeting and distant.
Where’s the balloon? I must admit: I had to see this film twice to understand what it was about. The first time I saw it, I was thrown off by one simple fact: the balloon is nowhere to be found! After the opening sequence plays out, and after the young child, Simon (played by Simon Iteanu) runs into it briefly at a train station, the red balloon disappears, for a full 50 minutes of the film. As in the original, it is contained completely to the outside world, traveling on its own will, but here it has what is essentially a cameo role. Simon doesn’t make friends with the balloon, he doesn’t hold it in his hand or touch it — the balloon doesn’t even come near him. He can only glimpse the balloon from a distance. No wonder he calls it stupid.
I should’ve known from the title. Flight of the Red Balloon is centered around Simon’s mother, Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), a professional puppeteer trying to balance her artistic career and her family life. But between her no-good tenants, her husband living in Montreal, and her daughter living in Brussels to take care of Suzanne’s grandfather, it’s a struggle. So she brings in Song, a Chinese national, to become Simon’s nanny.
From what I’ve just described, you might think that Flight of the Red Balloon would be a heavy film. But with HHH’s direction, it has a light, ethereal, almost dreamlike quality to it, the camera drifting through the action as if it were the balloon we’re not seeing.
Living life through objects. Okay, so there’s no balloon for most of the film, but other objects play key roles in the characters’ lives. HHH has updated the friendship of The Red Balloon to the digital age. It happens that Song is a former film student, and she carries her video camera almost everywhere. Simon is a fan of pinball, videogames, and jukeboxes. He handles Song’s video camera too, and even plays a small role in a short film Song is making — about a red balloon. Being a puppeteer, Suzanne makes her living by giving a voice to objects. In one of the film’s flashbacks, she has a memory about her daughter, Louise – and in her memory she uses a digital camera to capture that moment.
Life takes many forms in Flight of the Red Balloon. The red balloon itself appears not only in its true form, but also through a painting, on a wall, and in a video clip. How much of our lives today are experienced in virtual forms?
A word about Juliette Binoche. Balloons and electronic devices aside, there’s plenty of humanity in this film — and Juliette Binoche carries most of it. I think this is the first time HHH has worked with a performer of this caliber, and he took full advantage. In one incredible eight-minute long take shot, the camera pans around the apartment, between Simon, Song, Suzanne, and a piano tuner. Simon plays and talks on the phone, Song cleans and puts away things, the piano tuner tunes — but Suzanne is a flurry of emotion and action from the moment she enters until the end of the scene. Juliette Binoche’s emotional range is on full display here, moving from anger to sadness to concern and contemplation to joy with rare ease. Here she is from one angle:
At the end of the film, Simon encounters the balloon again — this time floating over a skylight at a museum. But instead of yelling out to it, or calling it names, Simon only looks up at it, with the courtesy and gentleness of an old friend. The balloon may be a far distance away from him, but it’s still there, and Simon decides to enjoy the moment he has with it.
Though it took me awhile to realize it, Flight of the Red Balloon was not one of those blind remakes we’re constantly seeing from Hollywood. It carries the same themes we’re used to seeing from HHH, while preserving the spirit of the original film. In this way, the film not only takes the baton from Lamorisse, but adds sheen and depth.
But I still haven’t seen the original film. More next week…