Reviews: The Flight of the Red Balloon (3/5); The Cottage (1/5)

The Flight of the Red Balloon
(Hou Hsiao-Hsien):
Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu, Song Fang.
Running time: 114 minutes

Albert Lamorisse’s joyful 1956 short film The Red Balloon is the springboard for this Parisian story from the Taiwanese master, Hou Hsiao-Hsien – his first work outside his native country. As is usual for a Hou film, what looks simple opens out, through stately compositions, into rich texture. The story observes three people: Suzanne (Juliette Binoche), an exasperated actress who provides well enough for her son Simon (Simon Iteanu) but is never there for him. She leaves him in the company of Chinese nanny Song (Song Fang). Simon, meanwhile, is followed longingly by a red balloon. Binoche is remarkably effervescent: unrecognisable in a shock of bleached hair – scattered, obsessed and vulnerable. This is a quiet, very thoughtful film, and it expertly illuminates the boy’s unspoken, unrealised plight. Ideas are teased out about the artifice of art and our enjoyment of it. But the pleasures are more aesthetic than emotional.

The Cottage
(Paul Andrew Williams):
Andy Serkis, Reece Shearsmith, Jennifer Ellison.
Running time: 93 minutes.

Paul Andrew William’s debut film London to Brighton was one of the finer British releases last year – a lean, gritty gangster thriller that showed Williams had vision. Now he has shot himself in the face. The Cottage is an embrrassment – a tawdry, ill-judged gangster comedy-caper that dovetails into a slasher-movie gorefest. If you didn’t know better, you would believe it was written by a mixed-up teenager. Glamour model Jennifer Ellison plays the wily daughter of a kingpin, kidnapped by hapless brothers Reece Shearsmith (The League of Gentlemen) and Andy Serkis. Each shot seems positioned to take advantage of her rear end, while Shearsmith plays it so wide, he clearly thinks he is still on TV.