One of my favorite memories of elementary school was Movie Day. We would come in from recess to find some sort of tempting snack on our desks and the lights dimmed. Would it be Rikki Tikki Tavi? Or the one about the boy and the doughnut machine? But my absolute favorite was the silent short, The Red Balloon.

What seemed like a somewhat melancholy but charming film to me then held deeper implications that were lost on my eight-year-old mind. The themes I missed—the threatened loss of childhood naïveté, the harsh edge of everyday adult life, the sweetness of an imagination satisfied, the loneliness of the “real” world—are explored softly and lyrically in acclaimed Chinese director Hsaio-Hsien Hou’s tribute to Albert Lamorisse’s 1956 classic.

Suzanne, a puppeteer by vocation, is a harried divorcée with a young son, Simon. Her performance venue, rather than busker-style in the park, takes place inside black-box theatres with rehearsals, musicians, and creative voicing. She has a lot on her plate: dealing with her ex-husband’s shenanigans; chasing down the tenant who hasn’t paid rent; missing her older daughter who is away at school; and struggling with her own loneliness in the midst of all the chaos.

She decides to hire a nanny for the curious and playful Simon. Song, in addition to her post as nanny, is a Taiwanese student studying film—and, significantly, she also serves as a calming, constant influence in the midst of the family. As she brings out her video camera to film her own tribute to the famous Red Balloon, she also films Simon throughout the city—all the while oblivious to the actual balloon that keeps flitting on the outside of Simon’s life.

Simon is a boy on the brink of reaching ’tweenhood. He still believes in fantasy—talking to a red balloon and asking it to come home with him, staring wide-eyed at his mother’s puppet show. But he is also lured by PlayStation and rides public transit by himself. He’s on the edge of losing his wonder; yet with Song’s help, he is able to capture these treasured moments of childhood.

This is not a fast-paced, plot driven film. It is slow and drifting, with long shots of the cast sipping tea or the balloon floating through the Parisian rooftops. It is a film meant to be taken in slowly, much as Paris itself is best seen while enjoying a drink in a boulevard café, or while strolling through a city park eating a crêpe. No hurrying: simply calming down and quietly observing the life going on everywhere around you, and letting it soak in.

To add to this ambiance, Hou did not use a “proper” script with lines for the actors provided for memorization. Rather, he described what he’d like to happen in a scene, and for the most part allowed the actors come up with the dialogue. This gives the film a sense of realism—sometimes the actors interrupt each other; other times there are prominent “pregnant pauses” between cues. It is as if someone set up a camera in this average Parisian woman’s flat and just let it roll.

Critics’ responses to this film have been from both ends of the spectrum: it is either exceptionally brilliant or exasperatingly dull, and I can understand both points of view. For me, the most poignant aspect of the film was how it led to a struggle with my own potent memories and emotions from the 1956 Red Balloon—and continually trying to reconcile the old with the new.

The child in me wanted more of the balloon, more of the wonder of Simon, more of his discovery that the balloon is following him—that the balloon, in a sense, cares about him. And yet this tribute, aptly titled Flight of the Red Balloon, is a modern perspective, as if Hou asked, “What happens to the balloon when society moves on? What happens when the magic of childhood is starting to fly away?” He is asking the child to genuinely look at the adult, and the adult to genuinely look at the child, in long contemplative stares.

Flight of the Red Balloon is unrated, but would probably garner a PG, given that there is no offensive language, no hint of violence, and no overt sexuality. However, even if your kids are fans of the original, they will most likely not be able to sit through this film; it is nearly two hours long, and is subtitled, which tends to either bore or overwhelm the younger crowd.

Courtesy of a local publicist, Jennie attended a press screening of Flight of the Red Balloon.