(Ed. Note: Originally published at Film-Think.)
“To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams.”
(de Chirico)
“For years I have been mourning and not for my dead, it is for this boy, for whatever corner in my heart died when his childhood slid out of my arms.”
(William Gibson)
Flight of the Red Balloon came into focus for me towards the end when a simple step back of the camera in Simon’s apartment reveals a second staircase that we had never seen before, and it leads to his bedroom. And I say “Simon’s” apartment even though it is his mother’s, and his nanny’s, and contains the activities of all those adults that pass through his life, because this film is about him. It is not a “children’s film” in the oblique way of the Lamorisse classic Hou references. But it is about children, and the way their narrative worlds imaginatively intersect with the stresses and insecurities of adulthood. The end of the film has Simon and his class in the Musée D’Orsay learning about Vallotton’s “Le ballon.” Slowly the children become aware of the shifting perspectives in the painting from overhead to profile, the odd sense of distance cultivated by the red ball in the corner. It is disorienting once you become aware of the subtexts implied by these impressionist angles – the adults in the background part of a world connected but disjointed from this young boy’s game. Are they arguing? Is this a clandestine rendezvous? We, like Simon, aren’t sure. But he does see his faithful red balloon skipping off the skylights of the gallery.
This eponymous balloon has attended Simon through the entirety of Hou’s film, which at times seems like little other than an excuse to gaze on Paris both in wide boulevard shots and cubist explorations of its narrower alleyways. But amidst these brilliant digressions, the red balloon loops and floats, keeping us tethered to Simon and all the turmoil in his little apartment. Abandoned by his father, his mother (Suzanne) makes a living through puppet theater and renting out the flat beneath her. The puppet business, itself another layer of theater in Simon’s life, takes up so much of Suzanne’s time that she hires a Taiwanese nanny to help out. As Suzanne becomes overwhelmed by a tenancy problem and other personal issues, Son becomes even more embedded in their harried household. We become more aware of Simon’s sense of loss when he shares memories of his father with Son in their walks around the city. But soon Son becomes another point of dislocation between Simon’s red balloon universe and the impenetrable world of adults. As a film student, Son spends her time filming Simon and gathering footage for a short-film homage to Lamorisse Le ballon rouge. They way Hou films her holding her camera, tightly tracking Simon’s movements, and relying on digital manipulation becomes a parody of what Hou is actually doing. Son’s lack of technique foists a special kind of neglect on Simon that is only subverted by Hou’s intense tenderness towards this little boy.
After spending enough time in Simon’s apartment, itself perched like a balloon at the top of their tenement, the nature of the presence of this balloon as something other than an intriguing formal device becomes clear. It is a token of love for Hou. It is an expression of a joyful, immediate cinema – the focal point of a seductive cinematography. It is like a tour guide across this city he obviously has profound affection for. It attends his little protagonist in the way we distract children during times of crisis, bumbling past windows, doors, and trains at precisely the right moment. And it allows us to connect to the way children self-narrate, as Simon inscrutably, yet gracefully endures the trials of his mother by means of imagination. In other words, the red balloon is a perfect evocation of Bazin’s idea that “the cinema more than any other art is particularly bound up in love.” It channels the compassion of Hou’s art into every corner of this deceptively dark film. Flight of the Red Balloon is punctuated by dislocations and misleading angles, his cinematography expressive of the difficulty of navigating adult life. It is against these sharp edges that Simon’s balloon continually bounces without bursting, Hou’s acrobatic direction keeping it afloat.
(It is interesting to note that Vallotton, who painted the scene we see at the end, is one of the great modern woodcut artists. Many of Hou’s Paris scenes have this graphic sensibility.)