A character that’s lighter than air

In Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “The Flight of the Red Balloon,” the enigmatic title character wafts around Paris, boards a Metro and catches the attention of a little boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu). Though the relationship between boy and balloon in Albert Lamorisse’s 34-minute classic “The Red Balloon” (1956) was ardent, Simon’s interest in the scarlet bubble is no more than curious. Children have changed, Paris has changed and the new balloon, a passive rather than an active presence, is palpably forlorn compared with its predecessor.

“I use the red balloon as a kind of old soul,” Hou, 61, said recently through a translator. “It was a novelty for the little boy in the original film, but it’s less of one for the boy in my film. He has other distractions -- piano lessons, video games. So the red balloon isn’t able to intervene. That’s my philosophy -- I don’t believe intervention is possible. The structure of society is established. As a filmmaker, you can only come in as an observer.”

“The original red balloon was a troublemaker,” said Pascal Lamorisse, who was 5 1/2 when he appeared in his father’s Oscar-winning film. “It raises hell at the school and the church, and it’s showing that those institutions are too strict. The balloon in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film is more a symbol of unreachable peace of mind.”

Accordingly, it mirrors the plight of Suzanne, played by a startlingly blond Juliette Binoche. She is a good-natured but fraught woman who has been abandoned by her boyfriend to bring up Simon alone; her much-missed daughter from a previous relationship resides in Belgium. Abused by her tenants, trying to juggle parenthood and her job as a puppeteer, Suzanne hires a Taiwanese nanny (Fang Song) to look after Simon. She is a student filmmaker who offers a calm perspective on Suzanne’s domestic turmoil. The drama is slight, but Hou poeticizes it.

An outsider’s view

The eminent Taiwanese director, whose films include “The Puppetmaster” (1993) and “The Flowers of Shanghai” (1998), previously observed a foreign city with his trademark serenity when he directed “Cafe Lumiere” in Tokyo. That 2003 film paid homage to Yasujiro Ozu in his centenary year and to “Tokyo Story” in particular by acknowledging the communication gap between generations and through a regretful depiction of the evolving metropolis.

“The Flight of the Red Balloon,” in French, is more casual in tone, especially in its embrace of both Paris and “The Red Balloon.” “Where ‘Cafe Lumiere’ was a tribute to Ozu, I didn’t see ‘The Flight of the Red Balloon’ as a tribute at all,” Hou said.

He had been invited to make a film in Paris by the Musee d’Orsay and stumbled on a reference to “The Red Balloon” in Adam Gopnik’s book “Paris to the Moon.” (Neither he nor Binoche had seen the film previously.) In his hands, the red balloon would become a floating touchstone for the noniconic, nontouristic Paris.

“When I make a film in Taiwan, I know the culture so well,” Hou said. “Whereas when I’m shooting abroad, I’m more able to stay outside and be an onlooker. I’m like an instant coffee -- I get instantly absorbed into the culture. I walk around, visit traditional markets, go to cafes. It’s more about observation than anything, and it’s built on my habits. For me, cinema is about daily life.”

Suzanne sustains herself through her voice work for puppet shows. In one of the most moving episodes in the film, she accompanies a Chinese puppeteer -- a spiritual descendant of the veteran in “The Puppetmaster” -- on an out-of-town performance. Returning by train, she gives him a postcard she’d kept for many years. (Binoche said that it was one she herself had acquired as an au pair in London.) In another sequence, Suzanne shows Simon and Song, the nanny, an old movie in which she appears as a child with her puppeteer grandfather. “There’s a saying in Taiwan that you have to bring down the walls of time to build a house of art,” Hou said.

Memory’s effects

Simon ITEANU’S mother, on whom Binoche partly based Suzanne, told Hou that the actress’ father had been a puppeteer, though that was scarcely true. “My father did some puppets briefly,” Binoche said. “But I remember more his masks period and sculpture period and acting and directing more than his puppet period. Funnily enough, it was Hou Hsiao-hsien’s inspiration. It was like a misunderstanding that came into the film.”

“Memory gives people their position in the universe,” said Hou, who is now thinking of making genre films, especially thrillers, back in Taiwan. “Suzanne carries this beautiful memory from her childhood, and puppetry allows her to find her place. Her life is a mess, and she’s pretty much on the verge of a breakdown. It’s because she has this ideal that she’s pursuing that’s she’s able to carry on. She makes sacrifices in her private life, but she transcends it through art.”

For all the visual grace notes provided by the red balloon on its travels, it’s Binoche’s face, her quiet devotion and her skirling voice accompaniments to the puppet shows that give the film its heart. We care for Suzanne from her first appearance, and we appreciate the effect Song has on her. She also shows Suzanne what she’s missing.

“There was a scene that Hou Hsiao-hsien decided not to put in the movie, and I was a little upset about it,” Binoche said, “because I thought it helped you understand Suzanne more. The idea that was expressed in the scene is that Suzanne realizes Song is having the best time with her son, and she realizes she’s missing a big part of his life and a big part of her life. But he explained to me, ‘In a puzzle, you have to leave a piece out, in order for people to think and feel and work it out themselves.’ ”