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Other reviews by Howard Schumann
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OH,
THE HUMANITY
The balloon is not as intrusive in the update, but still maintains a mysterious if more distant presence. In the opening scenes a young boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu) attempts to coax the red balloon from its perch high above a Parisian subway station. The balloon decides to hover for a while and then begins to follow Simon as he makes his way home from school on buses and trains. Going on hiatus, the balloon reappears now and then but takes center stage once again at the film’s conclusion.
The main character of the film, however, though not always on camera, is the balloon, a shimmering object in the sky that provides the emotional center of the film. While there are no overt magical sequences as in the original, the appearance of the balloon has a calming effect, suggesting that when we lose perspective and become too bogged down in the “stuff” of life, there is a presence that follows and guides us into the night. *
Jia’s camera provides indelible images of tailors and their families who are forced to work in the coal mine in Fenyang to make ends meet. Useless cannot be deemed a major work by this director, yet in its own small way it must be commended for recognizing the value in people who are underappreciated in modern society, and enhancing our understanding of a country growing rapidly in importance throughout the world.
The emotions range from the gloom of a daughter attempting to communicate with an Alzheimer’s patient to a young woman’s ecstatic dream about marrying a handsome guitar-player named Micke to the cheers of a crowd of onlookers. While there is no continuous narrative thread, the theme of greed and desperation appears in several sketches. The first of these threads features two corpulent individuals and their tiny dog sitting on a park bench, the woman bewailing the fact that no one understands or loves her, yet she blithely ignores the man’s comforting and reassuring words.
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Much
of the strength of Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s
films lies in the astute powers of his observation and a sensibility
that can turn details of everyday life into cinematic poetry.
In Café Lumiere, his lyrical tribute to Japanese
auteur Yasujiro Ozu, the focus was on the streets of Tokyo,
Japan. In his latest film, the lovely and nostalgic Flight
of the Red Balloon, Hou and cinematographer
Lee Pin-bing bring their observational camera to the streets
of Paris, focusing on a Parisian family as they walk the streets,
sit in the park, shop at stores, and visit a puppet theater,
where Suzanne, the family’s matriarch (Juliette Binoche)
works as a puppeteer, writing the material and providing the
vocal dramatics for the shows. 
Unlike
the missteps of Hou’s last film 
The
plot is woven around Simon’s mother and the frustrations
she faces in being a single mom: working with her puppet show,
dealing with recalcitrant tenants as a landlord, interacting
with her gracious Taiwanese nanny Song (Song Fang), arranging
for child care and piano lessons, talking on the phone to
her boy friend in Montreal, barely having enough time to provide
affection for young Simon who is quiet and lonely, and estranged
from his sister who lives in Brussels and only visits periodically.
It
is a story no different than thousands of other split households,
but the abilities of the impeccable cast and the lyricism
of Hou bring the film alive. In spite of her emotional ups
and downs, Suzanne never loses control and Hou always maintains
a wistful, almost lighthearted approach as people come and
go in the crowded apartment: a piano tuner tries to do his
job over the clamor of voices, the couple from downstairs
cook vegetables in the kitchen, and Suzanne’s lawyer
discusses her options in dealing with the tenant behind in
his rent. 
Independent
Chinese director Jia Zhangke has given us a look at a China
rarely seen in the West. Films such as 
Opening
in a garment factory in Guangdong, the close-ups of assembly
line workers tell of long hours, low pay, and tedium as they
labor in a noisy, sweaty factory under fluorescent lamps,
making parts of a final product they will never see. A different
aspect of the industry is shown in the segment featuring Ma
Ke, a clothes designer who speaks out against corporate products
that lack style and individuality. She has created two new
clothing lines from fabrics that have been hand woven: “Exception”
and “Useless,” and exhibits them in a fashion
show in Paris. 
There
are no assembly lines here, only the careful work of trained
craftspeople. One of her techniques is to first bury the clothes
in dirt to give the objects a “personal history”
that will distinguish them from mass produced products. In
the film’s final section which moves to the remote city
of Fenyang, a tailor works in a small shop using a sewing
machine that looks as if it is one hundred years old. Ma Ke
is drawn to such outposts which she claims has given her the
inspiration for some of her designs. 
A
lovely aerial view of a major city turns ominous with the
approach of a fleet of airplane bombers; an irate hairdresser
reacting to a perceived racial slur cuts a road through a
businessman’s bushy hair; a man dreams of being dragged
to an electric chair after a failed magic trick and a teacher
breaks down in front of her grade school class because her
husband called her a hag. These and about fifty other vignettes
that run the gamut from the outright depressing to the wildly
humorous to the joyously uplifting populate Roy Andersson’s
You, the Living, his first feature
since his critically acclaimed if commercially unsuccessful
Songs From the Second Floor. 
You,
the Living is filled with the same kind of imaginative
set-pieces as Songs, replete with black humor, surreal
situations, and strange looking characters. Though a bit overlong
and less focused than his earlier work, what remains constant
is Andersson’s unmistakable style with its stationary
camera, sterile-looking backgrounds, and precise attention
to detail. If there is a theme that ties the sketches together,
it is that our time on Earth is limited and “tomorrow’s
another day," so let’s treat each other with kindness.
Along the way, we are entertained by tuba and drum music from
the Louisiana Brass Band, dinner guests at a banquet hall
standing on their chairs singing a rousing song, and a house
that turns into a moving train. 
There
is also a hefty admixture of irony. During what seems to be
an executive luncheon, one man tells another on the phone
that workers don’t appreciate quality and how nice it
to appreciate money and the things that it can buy such as
fine wine. When he is not looking, however, a man at an adjacent
table calmly lifts his wallet from his jacket on the back
of his chair. Though Andersson’s cynicism is at times
not very well hidden, You, the Living has an underlying
humanism that shows compassion for the human condition. It
is a cautionary tale that looks at the mess we humans have
gotten ourselves into but suggests there is still time to
turn it around, if we heed the warning of the poet Goethe
that opens the film, “Be pleased then, you the living,
in your delightfully warmed bed, before Lethe’s ice-cold
wave will lick your escaping foot.”