3H Productions, Margo Films and Les Films du Lendemain present A film by Hou Hsiao Hsien World Sales : International Press FILMS DISTRIBUTION RICHARD LORMAND 34, rue du Louvre - 75001 PARIS - FR world cinema publicity Tel: + 33 1 53 10 33 99 www.filmpressplus.com Fax: + 33 1 53 10 33 98 cell. +33-6-0949-7925 www.filmsdistribution.com tel. +33-1-4804-5173 In Cannes Booth K5/L8 (Riviera) Tel: +33 4 92 99 32 47 Fax: +33 4 92 99 33 03 In Paris 34, rue du Louvre - 75001 Paris - FR Tel: +33 1 53 10 33 99 Fax: +33 1 53 10 33 98 A mysterious red balloon affectio- nately follows seven-year-old Simon around Paris. His mother Suzanne is a puppeteer who uses her vocal ta- lents to bring life to the shows she writes. Completely absorbed in her new show, single mother Suzanne becomes overwhelmed by the com- plications of modern daily life. She decides to hire Song Fang, a Taiwa- nese fi lm student, to help her care for Simon. FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON When did you fi rst see Albert days. He also writes about the game is the fi rst fi lm in a series initiated by the Lamorisse’s fi lm Le Ballon Rouge? on the merry-go-round in the Jardin president of Paris’ Musée d’Orsay, de Luxembourg: the kids on the ride Serge Lemoine, and the production, When Francois Margolin, on the behalf have little sticks, which they try to push in conjunction with the museum’s 20th of the president of the Musée d’Orsay, through the small metal ring as they go anniversary. The idea is to bring came to see me and invited me to past. I put that in the fi lm, too. together contemporary artists, make a fi lm with them, I agreed and in this case world class fi lmmakers, started researching what I might do. Coming to Lamorisse’s fi lm fi fty years and the Museum’s Impressionist I met people, read about Paris, read after it was made, what did you make or Art Nouveau treasures. about French cinema... and I found out of it? The terms are particularly simple: about Lamorisse’s fi lm and watched it. the museum must be present, either My fi rst reaction on seeing it was that throughout the fi lm or just a scene. I also read a very useful book, published it showed certain realities of Paris in This is how Hou Hsiao Hsien in France. It’s called Paris to the Moon 1956. It shows the city’s ambience, came to scout locations for and it’s by an American, Adam Gopnik. and the social system of the time. the fi rst time in Paris. I think I related to this book because The focus on the various constraints This was the starting point for the it’s written from the perspective of an surrounding the child is revealing: he adventure of this fi lm: outsider, and it became my guide to is forbidden to do things at home, at FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON. Paris. From the book I learned about school, on the bus ... He doesn’t have the children’s toy called “The Machine enough space to live, but at the same for Drawing the World,” which I used in time the fi lm gives a sense of the the scene in which Simon and Louise new, post-war freedoms around him. draw pictures. Gopnik’s book taught Kids today don’t have such freedoms. me many other things too, such as the I didn’t think of the red balloon itself fact that there were pinball machines in metaphorical terms; I think the fi lm in many Parisian cafés in the old shows cruel realities. How well did you know Paris before things are established, I can start work away. I associate Truffaut with single- making your fi lm? on the script. minded, persistent characters, and this ancient play offers an archetypal I’d visited the city two or three times Your Paris has a distinctly Chinese image of persistence. and seen the tourist sights. Once the fl avour, though, thanks to the fi lm was set up, I took every chance to casting of Song Fang as the child- It’s hard to fi nd people who are truly visit and spent as much time as I could minder and to the puppet play that persistent in that way these days, exploring the city. Suzanne narrates. but I think Suzanne is like that. She narrates the story of Zhang Yu, the There are certain similarities I met Song Fang at the Pusan Film scholar who tries to boil away the between your approach to Paris Festival when I was the dean of its ocean to retrieve his beloved Qiong and your approaches to Tokyo in fi rst Asian Film Academy and she Lian, and her own domestic situation Café Lumiere and to Taipei in Three was one of the students. I talked is analogous: she’s stuck in an Times. You anchor your stories in with her and found she spoke fl uent emotional impasse, and is determined the topography, culture, history French; she’d spent years in Brussels to help herself out of it through her and everyday life of the cities... and Paris, and was then studying at own efforts. Beijing Film Academy. Meeting her Before making Café Lumiere, I’d inspired the character she plays, who How much of a fi lm like this do you never imagined that I could make a is not untypical of Mainland Chinese script in advance? Just the overall fi lm abroad. I didn’t feel I knew well in France. Plenty of Taiwanese structure, or is it more than that? enough how people lived in other students go to France to study, but countries and other cultures. During hardly any of them work as child- I have a full script, but without the the Café Lumiere shoot I gave the minders. On the other hand, lots of dialogue. Each scene is discussed in actors certain freedoms to do things Mainlanders do. detail with the actors, who invent their their own way, and the results were own dialogue to fi t the situation. This quite pleasing. And so I approached The puppet play that Suzanne narrates worked fi ne in general but I had a this fi lm the same way. derives from a Yuan Dynasty play. problem with the child actor who plays Director Bai Jingrui wanted to adapt Simon. There are strict regulations on I start with the locations. The fi rst it as a movie for many years, but never the hours that children are allowed thing this time was to fi nd Suzanne’s did. Versions of it are often performed to work, and I had only thirty days apartment. Then Simon’s school. What in Taiwanese puppet theatres. About in total to shoot the fi lm. I wasn’t time does it come out? Where is it in fi ve years ago, the magazine Cahiers satisfi ed that I’d captured the child’s relation to the apartment? Where is du Cinema asked me to write feelings very fully, and that led to a lot the puppet theatre where Suzanne something about Truffaut’s cinema, of additional work in the editing and performs? Once all of these concrete and this play came to my mind right post-production. How well did Juliette Binoche we decided that Suzanne’s father and I wanted to use that in some way. adapt to this way of working? mother met in 1968 and later divorced. But this is a French movie, and so Presumably she’s used to having a They ran a printing business in Paris. I had to fi nd a way to integrate a dialogue script to work from? When they divorced, the apartments Chinese puppet-theatre story into a went to the wife, who bequeathed French narrative. That’s how I came We didn’t have that much time them to Suzanne. Suzanne had up with the idea that Suzanne would for preparation, and I met Juliette Louise by her fi rst long-term partner. be a creator and voice performer of only three times before we started When that relationship ended, Louise puppet shows in Paris. shooting. The fi rst time, she wasn’t went to live with her grandfather ready and couldn’t come up with any (Suzanne’s father) in Brussels. Pierre from an interview by Tony dialogue. The second time was not (Simon’s father) is thus Suzanne’s Rayns, conducted at Spot Cinema in much better. But the third time, she second long-term partner, a novelist; Taipei in March 2007, translated by arrived as Suzanne. She’d entered the he went to Canada as a writer-in- Chang ChuTi. character, knew her hair colour, knew residence for a university in Montreal. how she talked, everything. When you Most of this detail is never mentioned work with actors as professional as in the fi lm, but because the actors Juliette Binoche is, you can expect know it all they can draw on it and to get that kind of contribution from refer to it when they need to. them. This is the second fi lm you’ve made I had a similar experience with the in which puppet theatre is a central parents in Café Lumiere. They’re motif. What draws you to this very both professional actors and their specialised art? contributions ended up defi ning the characters they played.