In 1956, French filmmaker Albert Lamorisse charmed the world with his Oscar-winning short The Red Balloon. Now Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien has made a feature-length homage called Flight Of The Red Balloon.
Simon is a dreamy little boy living in Paris. He likes playing pinball. Suzanne is his stressed-out single mum. She likes puppets. And Song is Simon’s new Chinese nanny. She likes making movies.
To say nothing much happens in Flight Of The Red Balloon would be unfair. That’s because nothing does happen. Sure, there’s activity – Suzanne screeches, Simon makes pancakes, Song videotapes banalities, a piano is moved and tuned – but good luck discerning a story or character backgrounds.
Western multiplex movies are often criticized for sticking to a safe formula. Flight Of The Red Balloon will never be accused of that; what this feels like is a pretentiously filmed documentary about ordinary people on an utterly ordinary day.
Hou Hsiao-hsien favours long static shots and improvised dialogue between his performers. He’s trying to make points about loneliness and isolation but he does it by pushing his audience away.
To some, this is the work of a master filmmaker but to me it’s as arrogantly dismissive of the viewer, as anything to come out of Hollywood.
In this dreary milieu, Juliette Binoche brings passion to her feisty artist and mother, and Simon Iteanu and Fang Song are believable. But the occasional hovering red balloon feels more like an escapee from a Melbourne tourism ad than anything metaphorical or fantastic.
There are many, many critics out there who think this is a masterpiece. I’m not one of them and I have to say I found this a frustratingly oblique and dreadfully dull 113 minutes.
For me, this sank like a lead balloon and rates one star.
