Film

The meeting of Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 children’s classic The Red Balloon and Taiwanese director Hou (Three Times, Millennium Mambo, Café Lumière) sounds like nothing more than a stunt. But Flight of the Red Balloon—which is a sort of riff on but not remake of The Red Balloon—transcends the stunt (a red balloon does appear and does follow a little boy), instead delivering a meditation on the loneliness of everyday life.

Hou’s trademarks are all here: the slow, evocative camera movement; the long takes; the scenes that go on for a while and often end abruptly; the sense of plot happening somewhere offscreen. But Paris seems to have brought new energy into Hou’s universe. As an emotionally scattered woman who works at an arty puppet theater, Binoche breaks free of her glamour. She’s trying to be a good mother to her sweet, dreamy son Simon (Iteanu), but even in her late thirties she still seems to be trying to figure out what to be when she grows up. And she’s lonely. So is Song (Song), an immigrant filmmaking student whom she hires to take care of Simon. And of course, he’s lonely in a different way. The details of their lives emerge in offhanded comments and half-heard phone calls, but Hou’s not really interested in story. Once you accept that, this film offers richer, more enigmatic pleasures.