Flight of the Red Balloon
Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Written by Hou Hsiao-hsien and François Margolin. With Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu and Fang Song. (Unrated)

Obviously there’s just something about French-language films on American movie screens that makes us swoon. Consider the impunity with which they make a sport of our beloved narrative conventions. Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s all-but plotless Flight of the Red Balloon, for instance, offers a rare form of suspense, encouraging us to wonder whether anything is actually going to happen in it.

The answer: nope, not really. Neither a sequel nor a remake of Albert Lamorisse’s perennially kid-pleasing 1956 short The Red Balloon, Hou’s film plays as leisurely hovering, ambient homage: a bloom of quiet mirth in the graceful state of childhood. It makes fine use of a drowsy-eyed seven-year-old Parisian boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu) and of the sense, as in Lamorisse’s film, that a balloon is somehow looking after him. Read more… »

French star is a one-take wonder in Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s uplifting homage to Paris

BY Jason Anderson
Working in France (and outside of Asia) for the first time, Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien couldn’t have made a more appropriate casting decision than Juliette Binoche. Besides being one of world cinema’s most famous faces for two decades, Binoche remains uncommonly adventurous for such a major star. Hollywood projects such as Chocolat and Dan in Real Life are outnumbered on her CV by films with some of the world’s most revered directors, Binoche having followed indelible early performances for Leos Carax and Krzysztof Kieslowski with more recent turns for Michael Haneke (Caché), Abel Ferrara (Mary) and Abbas Kiarostami (the forthcoming The Certified Copy).
But even after all those experiences, working with Hou on Flight of the Red Balloon — which starts a two-week run at the Royal this weekend — presented particular challenges. Like most of his films, Hou’s first European-made feature is dominated by lengthy scenes in which the characters gradually reveal themselves in tiny, subtle increments. Read more… »

By Graham Fuller, Special to The Times

IN Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “The Flight of the Red Balloon,” the enigmatic title character wafts around Paris, boards a Metro and catches the attention of a little boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu). Though the relationship between boy and balloon in Albert Lamorisse’s 34-minute classic “The Red Balloon” (1956) was ardent, Simon’s interest in the scarlet bubble is no more than curious. Children have changed, Paris has changed and the new balloon, a passive rather than an active presence, is palpably forlorn compared with its predecessor.

“I use the red balloon as a kind of old soul,” Hou, 61, said recently through a translator. “It was a novelty for the little boy in the original film, but it’s less of one for the boy in my film. He has other distractions — piano lessons, video games. So the red balloon isn’t able to intervene. That’s my philosophy — I don’t believe intervention is possible. The structure of society is established. As a filmmaker, you can only come in as an observer.” Read more… »

The word most apt in describing Dan in Real Life is charming. Usually I’m not a fan of romantic comedies, but this film is a bit different than the usual fare. True, it is a story about a budding relationship, but told from the man’s perspective.

What is also refreshing about Dan in Real Life is that it is a romantic comedy for the 40-something set. Maybe I’m not knowledgeable enough about this genre to know any better, but I found the plot interesting as Dan has to deal with three teenage daughters while trying to get over the tragic death of his wife. Dan in Real Life is a smart comedy that put a lasting smile on my face. Read more… »