Cannes. The Flight of the Red Balloon.

"Loosely inspired by Albert Lamorisse's 1956 classic The Red Balloon, Hou Hsiao-hsien's French-language debut gracefully extends his recent thematic concerns - specifically, with the hectic pace and isolated nature of urban life - and relocates them to contempo Paris," writes Variety's Justin Chang.

"Rather than favoring an exclusively child's-eye perspective, Hou holds the three central characters tightly within the frame, yet still manages to isolate them, his camera registering the subtlest shifts in tone, tension and body language. As usual with Hou, the film's exquisite visual pleasures will be lost on viewers unreceptive to his patient but emotionally generous sensibility." The Flight of the Red Balloon (Le Voyage du ballon rouge) has opened the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes.

"Hou's version seems at first more conventional than the original, a full two hours feature film, with a distinct unifying plot focusing on a puppeteer and her son, plenty of dialogues between the characters, and a star, Juliette Binoche, to help put it all across," writes Dan Fainaru for Screen Daily. "At second glance, the film is packed with reflections about cinema and art, references to the past and the present, fluid flashbacks that slip seamlessly in and out, and glimpses behind the magic that artists are supposed to work on their customers."

European-films.net editor Boyd van Hoeij finds it "contemplative and at times poetic, but is strongest when caught up in the whirlwind of conflicting emotions of Binoche’s character, an overworked puppeteer and a mother of a seven year-old boy she mostly leaves in the care of a Chinese nanny.... Though the film indulges perhaps a bit too much in shots of the titular balloon floating above the Parisian skyline, it remains a very well-chosen symbol of the simple pleasures of childhood, the continuous vitality and regenerative qualities of art (through its connection to the painting and the short film) and, through its color, to China itself."

And as always, Fabrizio Maltese is shooting great pix.

Charles Masters has a piece in the Hollywood Reporter on the return to Cannes of a restored version of the original.

Updates: "The film isn't remotely cute, the idea of a balloon floating around the French capital is handled with a genuinely lyrical sense of poetry," writes Time Out's Geoff Andrew, praising Binoche, the camerawork and the score before concluding, "There's not much plot here at all, but in case you're left wondering what this marvellously becalmed film has all been about, Hou ends with a quite inspired scene that ties everything together. For this critic, it's probably the best ending to a movie since the one Valeska Grisebach dreamed up for Longing."

Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab: "For me, a little of this unemphatic, anti-dramatic naturalism goes a pretty long way - I'm still hoping for an entire movie by Hou as impassioned and beguiling as the lovely first section of his last feature, Three Times."

Duane Byrge in the Hollywood Reporter: "Weighted with the dreary ballast of a heavy-themed family saga and grounded by the conceit of letting the players ad-lib their dialogue, Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge drifts, poofs and ultimately flops. Audiences may rightly discern that this Balloon is in both form and content an egg."

"If I see no film better than this one at Cannes this year, I'll leave a happy man," declares Salon's Andrew O'Hehir. "The Flight of the Red Balloon is not arty or difficult in any way, and I genuinely believe that, in its unassuming fashion, it's a masterpiece. Hou has approached one of the best-loved films in cinema history and the iconic, too-often-photographed scenery of Paris, and composed them into a bittersweet comic valentine that honors the originals but feels fully contemporary."

Update, 5/20: Emanuel Levy: "Hou's Café Lumière and the new work are linked thematically - both dealing with the hustle and bustle of life in big metropolitan centers - but they lack the rich texture, the intriguing subtext, the subtle poetic mood of his more indigenous works, half of which were shown in Cannes Festival, including his 1998 masterpiece, Flowers of Shanghai."

Updates, 5/21: Hou's "mastery of film space remains assured as ever, even many miles from home, as does his work with actors," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "His direction of Ms Binoche is particularly notable because he doesn't allow her to work her wiles with beauty or dribbling tears, as is too often her wont."

Binoche's is "perhaps the best and certainly the most eccentric performance of her career," writes Dennis Lim for IFC News. "There's a clear parallel here with the Wong Kar-wai - both Hou and Wong are moving on from self-consciously retrospective works (Three Times and 2046) — but Hou's sensibility, grounded in concrete specifics of time and place, travels better."

Fabrizio Maltese shoots photos of Hou for european-films.net.

Update, 6/2: "We loved this film, but while watching it couldn't help but think that there's a reason Hou's work rarely make much headway in the US," writes Alison Willmore at the IFC Blog. "His muted narratives aren't difficult to follow as much as unfriendly to the even slightly impatient."

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Cannes @ 60. Index.

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Posted by dwhudson at May 18, 2007 3:34 AM