'Flight of the Red Balloon'

Rating:

John Anderson

April 4, 2008

Inspired by Albert Lamorisse's enchanted "Red Balloon" of 1956, Hou Hsiao-hsien's first French-language film shows why the Taiwanese master is considered one of the world's great filmmakers.

In Paris, a young boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu) has two women in his life: his mother, Suzanne ( Juliette Binoche), a puppeteer and voice artist who is preoccupied with a new show; and Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese film student and nanny who provides Simon with all the attention and serenity his frantic mother lacks. The balloon? It disappears for much of the movie, then starts to shadow Simon, a floating bit of happiness, the whereabouts of which are unpredictable.

Hou shot without a script, his actors providing lines for situations and the result is a film of such revelatory intimacy that it almost physically elevates the viewer, as if he or she were being airlifted by art. In his genius, Hou uses the reflective surfaces of Paris to create a near-kaleidoscopic mix of realities and perceptions. The result is the first truly great release of 2008, and Binoche's best performance.

FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON (unrated). Written by Hou and Francois Margolin. 1:53. (language). At the IFC Center, Sixth Avenue at West Third Street, Manhattan; coming soon to the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington.