The Flight Of The Red Balloon

The Age

Thursday September 25, 2008

Philippa Hawker

The Flight of the Red Balloon

Madman, 113 min, PG,

drama, 2007

4/5

Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien travels to Paris to create a lovely, deceptively leisurely, undemonstratively dense evocation of childhood, isolation, creativity and the complex rituals of the everyday that draws some implicit inspiration from Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 short, The Red Balloon. In Hou's film, there is a child and a balloon, but there are other characters and concerns. These include the boy's mother - a fine, nervy, agitated and generous performance from Juliette Binoche - and a Chinese film student and nanny (Song Fang) who seems to be the director's surrogate, contemplating with attentive detachment the stories unfolding around her. It is she, intriguingly, who is aware of the Lamorisse film; meanwhile it is her young charge, Binoche's son, who seems to be reliving the Lamorisse experience, haunted by the benign, enigmatic, poetic presence of a red balloon, invisible to everyone else. This two-disc release includes a couple of rewarding extras: the original 1956 short, which retains its unsettling wonder, more than half a century on, and another Lamorisse work White Mane, a lyrical but tough-minded tale of a boy who tries to protect a wild horse.

DVD extras include:

interview; short films; trailer