Flight of the Red Balloon

Paris and Hou Hsiao-hsien were made for each other: there is no one alive who shoots cities any better than Hou, and there’s no city more beautiful than Paris.  And Hou manages to find a fresh look for that most photographed of burghs: he shoots the streets, where people live and love and play pinball.  And though they surely are, his scenes don’t feel stage managed.  Although he surely does, it doesn’t seem like he’s beside the camera with a megaphone saying “Ok, red Peugeot, go … NOW!”  Hou’s sequences feel entirely natural, organic, like they grew out of the moment instead of some A.D.’s head.

Yet he captures as carefully composed images as any director alive; they are complex and beautiful, full of planes and curves and reflections.  And he lets us see them, for God’s sake, he lingers on them so we can actually take them in.  It’s not a new notion, of course, and it’s practiced by other directors today, but I don’t think anyone does this slow, contemplative style any better than Hou.

Which leads us to a problem many have with his films, and Flight of the Red Balloon is no exception: there’s not a lot of plot going on, not a lot of story. In fact, in Flight, there’s even less than usual.  What you have basically is a slice of life of a Parisian family: harried single mother Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), her son Simon (Simon Iteanu) and her daughter Louise (Louise Margolin), who is in Brussels caring for her ailing grandfather.  Suzanne is a brittle woman who is clearly not in control of her emotional and family life, and covers up for it by burying herself in her work.  Simon is a lonely little boy who craves attention, both from his mother and his absentee father Pierre, who is estranged from Suzanne and working on a novel in Montreal.

Suzanne’s loneliness and inability to cope is reflected in Simon’s own; in fact, she has unwittingly created for him the same despair that dogged her as the daughter of a broken marriage.  Perhaps what frustrates her most of all is her inability to avoid repeating the mistakes of her own parents; like Suzanne, we can see Simon’s life mirroring hers.

Into this fragile ecosystem comes Song (Song Fang), Simon’s new nanny, and she becomes our surrogate — we see this family through her calm, non-judgmental eyes.  If we are tempted to disapprove of Suzanne’s casual cruelty, or her tenant Marc’s (Hippolyte Girardot) clueless disregard, we regain our balance and objectivity through Song’s unflappable presence.

As Simon, Itaneau radiates wonder and vulnerability, without coming across as a well-schooled child actor.  Fang’s performance suits her character’s place as our proxy — she hits all the right notes of dispassionate care, but by the end of the film she is a sold part of Simon’s world, providing the grounding and stability that Suzanne and Simon desperately need.

As Suzanne, Binoche  shows why she is one of the top film actors working today. Harried and dismissive one moment and achingly vulnerable the next, she is not afraid to look frazzled, unglamorous, and even downright frumpy.  At other times, Hou’s camera lingers lovingly on her features, and she is breathtakingly lovely. One scene stands out early-on: as she applies makeup in the bathroom, Marc and a friend yammer at her outside the door.  As she listens, she replies dispassionately to their questions, but as we watch, her real feelings can be seen in the tiniest movements of her head and mouth and eyes.

Flight of the Red Balloon is perhaps best understood as a tone poem that describes a woman in crisis and the family that revolves around her.  It’s lack of plot and overall movement will be intolerable to some — the characters don’t change over the course of the film, there are no lessons learned or comeuppances had.  Nobody gets even with anybody else, or comes suddenly face-to-face with their own mortality.  But its rhythms and acting and camera-work combine to evoke a moods of sadness and loneliness that are palpable.  And if you let it take you where it wants you to go, if you immerse yourself in its atmosphere and rhythms, it is a beautiful, mesmerizing ride.