Making his directorial name with a series of expansive, hyper-complex social frescos during the ’80s such as A City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s films have often been works to admire rather than enjoy. With his wondrous, lighter-than-a-marshmallow-in-zero-gravity The Flight of the Red Balloon, he delicately tips the balance in favour of the latter, producing one of his most direct, moving and deceptively simple films to date.
Relocating from his native Taiwan to the streets of Paris with a copy of Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 kiddie flick Le Ballon Rouge under his arm, this charming slice-of-life drama dips its toe into the hectic urban lifestyles of the upwardly mobile middle-class, and is taken mainly from the perspective of the titular balloon.
A revelatory turn by Juliet Binoche (some might argue her best ever screen performance) as a rattled wife and mother attempting to conduct a long distance relationship is the glue that binds together various sub-strands involving her young son’s piano lessons, her new live-in nanny (who, in a flourish of cinematic self-deprecation, is herself making a DV homage to Lamorisse’s film) and her day job as a puppeteer. As with Hou’s previous films, Flight recognises that real life rarely caters for the neat narrative arcs that cinema so often demands. Instead, we are offered the base elements of a drama, which we are invited to create in our own minds.
With its dazzling gold and red cinematography, the film is at once a statement on the nature of cinematic artifice (at one point, we are even shown the drifting balloon being controlled by a man with a fishing rod) and a poignant dissection of cloistered inner-city living. The final shot, too, is an absolute doozy.
