If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you might know that 1956’s “The Red Balloon” is one of my favorite short films. I’m not the only one inspired by this short masterpiece, as Hou Hsiao-Hsien demonstrates with this thematic homage to the classic children’s film. But I think Hou has missed a huge point with his film.

Unknown to the majority of American audiences, Hou has directed since the early 1980s, and six of which have been up for the Palm d’Or award at Cannes. He was even voted Best Director of the Decade by the Village Voice over such directors like Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino, but again, he’s unknown here. His films are almost a kissing cousin to Japan’s master, Ozu, in which he lets the actors act within a stilted confinement, moving the camera at times and leisurely edited sequences are the key difference.
Hou was influenced and inspired by the 1956 short. He said “it shows the city’s ambience and social system of the time. The focus on the various constraints surrounding the child is revealing: he is forbidden to do things at home, at school, on the bus…but at the time the film gives a sense of the new, post-war freedoms around him.” I say that’s a fair assessment of the original short, but I think he was baffled in the way kids today are bored and their constraints.

Hou’s film follows an Asian nanny, young, and fresh out of film school, willing to help this single mom raise and watch her kid. Throughout the film, we get more of an idea on each character’s life and struggles. Hou wrote a screenplay devoid of dialogue as the actresses had to come up with the character and their character’s dialogue all in improvisation. This creates a quiet film; some scenes go on without dialogue for several minutes and as the film slowly reveals each characters development, the film requires the audience to be patient.

But the real flaw of the film is the lack of chemistry between the boy and the balloon. In the original film the boy and the balloon act as a playful kid and a puppy. Here, the kid is widely uninterested in such a boring object, as his nanny Song is filming a film with him and the red balloon. Hou misses the point of the original film as the innocence and friendship elements are dropped in favor of the mom’s more pressing matters. The kid is mostly alone, but has his Playstation and Gameboy to keep busy. Those items are thematically boring. Compared to the original film, the balloon is almost a character with personality. Here the balloon pops in and out and has a screen time less than 5 minutes. I don’t see Hou’s point; the balloon is shrugged off in favor of a slow moving film about a single mom.

Hou’s films take time to digest. They reward patient viewers as many of the mainstream audiences will be bored to tears. The film is directed with expert precision and the acting is really marvelous, especially Juliette Binoche. I feel if the film wasn’t based on or off the original 1956 classic, we might be discussing a really good film about connecting. But it is based on Albert Lamorisse’s film and I think Hou was uninterested in the connection and meaning of their relationship between the boy and the balloon. He might be a critic darling, but for my first time with Hou; I feel he widely missed the mark with this film.