New film goes far past first one's reach

By Rob Nelson
Universal Press Syndicate

Published on Friday, May 30, 2008

Juliette Binoche's high-wire turn as a Parisian puppet show creator and strung-out single mom is but one of many magic elements in Flight of the Red Balloon — the helium-filled orb of the title being another.

As in French director Albert Lamorisse's half-hour classic from 1956 (known simply as The Red Balloon), a young boy — Simon (Simon Iteanu), the 7-year-old son of Binoche's Suzanne — is blessed with the seemingly supernatural attention of a balloon that looks out for him like an adoptive parent. But while this film, also in French, multiplies the original's length by a factor of four, using the extra running time to flesh out the kid's desire for a pal of rubber or any other material, the balloon itself has been demoted to a cameo role. What matters most here are the earthbound figures below, including jittery Suzanne, who hardly floats through her familiarly stressful life.

Flight of the Red Balloon takes an aptly playful approach to its status as sequel to a treasured commodity. The first scene finds Simon horsing around near the Metro entrance, bribing the lofty balloon to lower itself within grasp. ''I'll give you something bigger than you can imagine!'' the boy offers in exchange for the balloon's companionship. ''Anything you want!''

Where Lamorisse's near-silent movie doubles as a mid-'50s Parisian travelogue, showing that the City of Lights hadn't yet come under the corporate power grid, Flight takes off from the premise that toys are us — that even a grade-school boy knows how to negotiate fiercely for what he wants.

Speaking of deals, Flight director Hou Hsiao-hsien — whose Taiwanese films (including Flowers of Shanghai and Millennium Mambo) have earned worldwide acclaim but meager box office in the West — has shrewdly borrowed Lamorisse's beloved Balloon to barter for Binoche and his biggest budget ever. The trade proves more than fair. Hou doesn't exactly string Balloon fans along, but by downplaying the fantasy element in favor of urban realism (Hou's balloon drops in early and then disappears for almost an hour), he ventures far beyond the first film's reach.

There's even a slight touch of John Cassavetes' nail-biting melodrama in Hou's film. Binoche, her hair dyed blond as if in homage to Gena Rowlands' women under the influence of the '70s, manages to pull a handful of tour de force moments out of everyday middle-class anxiety. The picture of Suzanne nervously thumbing through her paper-strewn apartment for a missing tenancy agreement — a needle in a haystack — is about as far removed from a boy's balloon-chasing bliss as one could imagine. ''Why are you so busy, Mama?'' Simon asks Suzanne, a hauntingly authentic line for anyone with a job and a kid, give or take a spouse.

Working again with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing, who shot the blue neon-tinted Millennium Mambo, Hou turns Lamorisse's open-air adventure into a celebration of interiors — cramped but never quite claustrophobic, messy but warm and inviting. There's room in Mom's funky walk-up for no more than two camera positions, and Hou makes indelible use of both to observe the ordinary comings and goings of Simon, Suzanne, her freeloading tenant (Hippolyte Girardot), his young girlfriend (who hilariously makes herself at home in Suzanne's tiny kitchen) and Simon's new nanny, Song (Song Fang), who also happens to be a student filmmaker with an eye on Lamorisse. In Hou's film, the ''magic'' red balloon could be merely Song's affordable prop, and her young charge is doubling as an unpaid actor.

On paper, that idea might appear as though Hou is merely playing a glib intellectual game with valuable emotional material — asserting that one woman's classic film is another's home movie, that fantasy is no more near or far than another pocket-sized digital camcorder. But on screen, it seems as if Hou, even in his most commercial film, has set himself an impressively daunting artistic challenge. Can the complications of modern life — camcorders included — be honestly addressed in a film that, by the standards of old-fashioned entertainment, still manages to soar? The full answer is hardly simple, but, simply speaking, Hou's Balloon flies high, indeed.