Finally - #2; and my best film of 2008

#2 - The Flight of the Red Balloon
directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien

I'll admit I'm predisposed to love a Hou Hsiao-hsien film. I don't know, maybe it's genetic? Anyway, when I knew this project was coming down the pike, I was almost giddy with anticipation. One of my favorite directors creating his interpretation of one of my favorite childhood movies? Sure!

Then I got to see it. Hou managed to do something remarkable. He created a completely familiar film, not shying away from the elements of the original - and something wholly new. The greatest change is the addition of the boy's (Simon in this version) home life. We meet the wonderful Juliette Binoche as Suzanne, Simon's mother - a voice actress for a puppet theater (somehow, that just seems right). She's a frazzled whirlwind of a woman. Her life's a wreck, but she wouldn't seemingly have it any other way. Then there's Song, the Chinese nanny of the boy who is studying cinema in Paris and is contantly filming (some of what we see comes through her lens). And then, there is, of couse, the balloon. Dilly-dallying around Paris. Following Simon, sort of like a pleasant stalker. Its presense in the film is somehow calming, reassuring. Amidst all the flurry of activity, it seems to settle things down.

The film is at once a fantasia and a realistic domestic drama. It's a combination that many filmmakers have tried - mixing the magical and the mundane - but Hou is one of few to get it right. He gets it so right, that the film leaves you with a warm feeling. As if a benevolent balloon were traveling with you, just over your shoulder, all the way home from the theater.

And...My best film of 2008.













#1 - The Class
directed by Laurent Cantet

I became familiar with Laurent Cantet, one of France's fastest-rising filmmakers, in 2001 with the remarkable slow-burn drama Time Out. That was a fascinating, cool (as in icy) story of a man who loses his job but doesn't have the capability of informing his family, leading him to create a second life outside the home that remains a secret from everyone he loves.

It was fascinating then to see The Class, a warm, unusual experience in the cinema. It is based on the memoir of a single school year by Francois Begaudeau. Begaudeau wrote the screenplay and stars as the teacher at the film's center. The class full of actors are all middle school students from the same school, all basically acting as themselves. It sounds like a documentary, but it most certainly isn't. None of the kids are exactly themselves. Begaudeau isn't playing himself, exactly. Begaudeau's comrades are all played by real teachers, but neither are they playing themselves.

Cantet, as director, by allowing non-professional actors to develop characters based on themselves and based on parts of the book, has developed a style of cinema rarely seen. It's almost an ethnographic study - the type of film that Robert J. Flaherty made (Nanook of the North). But it works so well as drama. Each person seems so real, in part because they are. In part, because a director wanted things to be that way.

I love films that defy categorization (see Waltz with Bashir) and The Class certainly does. It's a pure pleasure. The children are brats, or they're well-behaved. They're smart, or not-so-smart. The teacher has moments of inspiration and moments where you're sure his license should be revoked. It's not Stand and Deliver: one student doing unexpectedly well on one assignment is about as close as it gets. It's not Dead Poets Society: indeed, a lot of the students seem to hate their teacher. What it is is the best and most realistic dramatization of one year inside one classroom that has been put on screen. What it is is the best film of 2008.