"Flight of the Red Balloon" is a gem made by a filmmaker who loves life, and knows how to capture its ebb and flow and sweet complication.
This quiet, patient masterwork comes from the Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao Hsien, here exploring two foreign territories: modern-day Paris, and the storybook Paris represented by the 1956 classic Oscar- winning short film "The Red Balloon," in which Albert Lamorisse delivered a hardy fable of childhood resistance. It is proof that largely improvised story, characters and dialogue can be approached with the kind of visual rigor and humanistic touch only a handful of contemporary cinema artists have to offer.
Like his earlier film "The Puppetmaster," "Flight of the Red Balloon" concerns artists who work with puppets and whose lives feed on theatrical artifice. The superlative Juliette Binoche plays Suzanne, who lives in a Paris flat with her preteen son, Simon (Simon Iteanu). She runs a puppet theater while running her life in perpetual whirlwind mode. Her lover is away in Montreal and may or may not be coming back.
Much of the film, lit with a subtle shimmer by cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing, is photographed in the apartment building as various workaday characters come and go: a piano teacher, a pair of piano movers, a solicitor helping Suzanne figure out what to do about her deadbeat tenants downstairs (one of whom may be an ex-lover). We learn bits of these characters’ backgrounds, and in delicately woven flashback Hou’s film shows us Simon with his stepsister, who comes to visit every summer. Such scenes are not mined for their sentimental value; they’re simply there to show us a fuller picture of one boy’s life.
Hou shot without a script, his actors providing lines for situations and the result is a film of such revelatory intimacy that it almost physically elevates the viewer, as if he or she were being airlifted by art. In his genius, Hou uses the reflective surfaces of Paris to create a near-kaleidoscopic mix of realities and perceptions.
Hou has approached one of the best-loved films in cinema history and the iconic scenery of Paris, and composed them into a bittersweet comic valentine that honors the originals but feels fully contemporary. In French with subtitles, "Flight of the Red Balloon" is not rated. It has a running time of 114 minutes.
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Date and Time
Sunday Oct 26, 2008 Tuesday Oct 28, 2008
October 26th at 2pm
October 27th & 28th at 7pm
Location
Smith Opera House82 Seneca StGeneva, NY
Fees/Admission
$5 general admission$3 students & senior citizens
Website
Contact Information
315-781- LIVE (5483) or toll-free 1-866-355-LIVE (5483)
