Flight of the Red Balloon

Hou Hsiao-hsien (City of Sadness; Millennium Mambo) abandons his usual Taiwanese settings for a modern-day look at the City of Light in this lovely, ephemeral and at times experimental update of a classic 1959 French children’s short. Trading in the sweeping historical epics and flashy costume dramas of prior festival hits like Flowers of Shanghai and The Puppetmaster, Hou instead continues the obsessions of his more recent Café Lumiere, tracking the rhythms of life—and the rhythms of light—in the contemporary world to beautiful, dazzling effect.

The great Juliette Binoche is Suzanne, a harried single mom whose job in puppet theater leaves little time for her son, Simon. Fortunately Simon is just as happy playing pinball by himself, or merely watching a red balloon slowly ascend to the sky. The arrival of Taiwanese film student Song (Song Fang) as a nanny helps the stress, especially after Suzanne’s noisy neighbors and absent ex-husband begin to make increasingly difficult demands.

As with most Hou films, the plot is merely an excuse on which to place a thousand memorable images, and in the light of Paris the director has found a dazzling muse. At times the film is as entranced by the reflection of light—off of busses, through windows, from skylights, etc.—as it is by its Ozu-esque “central” topic, the everyday life of the modern family. Whether in expansive autumn light or cramped domestic shadows, though, we’re in the hands of an artist who knows his medium and his message, as this brave, wistful, fragile and ultimately exquisite film proves.