![]() ![]() ![]() By reaching a century into the past (“Le Ballon” is from 1899 one of the film’s working titles was À la recherche du ballon rouge), Hou implies that the red balloon, and whatever it represents, has always been elusive, and that Simon will chase after it in his own way, as Pascal did in his. In the painting, a child in the foreground runs after a red ball, while two women in the distance go about their business. In the film’s penultimate scene, Simon visits the Musee d’Orsay in Paris on a field trip, and we watch as his class discusses “Le Ballon,” by Félix Vallotton. Hou has not updated The Red Balloon so much as adapted its symbolism for his own purposes. Perhaps, he seems to suggest, we can find beauty in clutter and distraction, with a little more patience and quiet attention. And yet the sheer loveliness of the piano-tuning scene complicates that idea: Hou has crafted an exquisite scene out of just such dissonance and disorder. The argument may seem clear: The enemies of beauty are no longer school and church and the mob but the clutter and distraction of contemporary life. ![]()
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