PROVIDENCE RESIDENCES

Two weeks ago, Steve and I spent a lovely Saturday evening strolling around downtown Providence and nearby Brown University. I took pictures of a few recognizable spots, but I think these are a little more fun.

TALK TO HER

My new essay on Pedro Almodovar's coma-melodrama is up on the Brattle's Film Notes blog. I have to admit that this wasn't the easiest one to write about. It unfolds so beautifully, unexpectedly and subtly that you almost don't want to spoil the effect it has by over-analyzing it. Anyway, it kicks off the Brattle's six-week Thursday night retrospective of the director's work, playing as part of a double feature with what is increasingly my favorite Almodovar film.

FAVORITE MOVIES OF EVERY YEAR SINCE BIRTH

I guess this was inevitable. And you know I can't pass up another opportunity to generate a geeky list. My pick for one absolute favorite from every year, followed by its director:


1975 - Nashville, Robert Altman
1976 - Chinese Roulette, Rainer Werner Fassbinder
1977 - Annie Hall, Woody Allen
1978 - Days of Heaven, Terrence Malick
1979 - All That Jazz, Bob Fosse
1980 - 9 to 5, Colin Higgins
1981 - Reds, Warren Beatty
1982 - Tootsie, Sydney Pollack
1983 - A Christmas Story, Bob Clark
1984 - This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner
1985 - My Life as a Dog, Lasse Hallstrom
1986 - Hannah and Her Sisters, Allen
1987 - The Last of England, Derek Jarman
1988 - High Hopes, Mike Leigh
1989 - The Decalogue, Krzysztof Kieślowski
1990 - Goodfellas, Martin Scorsese
1991 - Edward II, Jarman
1992 - The Long Day Closes, Terence Davies
1993 - 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, Francois Girard
1994 - Ed Wood, Tim Burton
1995 - Safe, Todd Haynes
1996 - Trainspotting, Danny Boyle
1997 - The Sweet Hereafter, Atom Egoyan
1998 - Rushmore, Wes Anderson
1999 - Beau Travail, Claire Denis
2000 - Yi Yi, Edward Yang
2001 - The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson
2002 - Y Tu Mama Tambien, Alfonso Cuaron
2003 - Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola
2004 - The Return, Andrey Zvyagintsev
2005 - Me and You and Everyone We Know, Miranda July
2006 - Duck Season, Fernando Eimbcke
2007 - There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson
2008 (so far) - One of these ten

FAVORITE ALBUMS OF EVERY YEAR SINCE BIRTH

As seen here and many other places, a silly new music meme. Since I've only been seriously making lists since around 1996 (and buying albums since '89), a few of those early years were tough to determine.

1975 - Brian Eno, Another Green World
1976 - Joni Mitchell, Hejira
1977 - Brian Eno, Before and After Science
1978 - Blondie, Parallel Lines
1979 - The Clash, London Calling
1980 - Talking Heads, Remain In Light
1981 - ABBA, The Visitors
1982 - Kate Bush, The Dreaming
1983 - R.E.M., Murmur
1984 - Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain
1985 - Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
1986 - XTC, Skylarking
1987 - R.E.M., Document
1988 - Everything But the Girl, Idlewild
1989 - The B-52s, Cosmic Thing
1990 - Concrete Blonde, Bloodletting
1991 - Seal, Seal
1992 - R.E.M., Automatic For the People
1993 - Pet Shop Boys, Very
1994 - Portishead, Dummy
1995 - Pizzicato Five, The Sound of Music by Pizzicato Five
1996 - Belle and Sebastian, If You're Feeling Sinister
1997 - Ivy, Apartment Life
1998 - Saint Etienne, Good Humor
1999 - The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
2000 - The Avalanches, Since I Left You
2001 - Steve Wynn, Here Come the Miracles
2002 - Tori Amos, Scarlet's Walk
2003 - The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow
2004 - Sufjan Stevens, Seven Swans
2005 - Saint Etienne, Tales From Turnpike House
2006 - Regina Spektor, Begin to Hope
2007 - Jens Lekman, Night Falls Over Kortedala
2008 (so far) - Sam Phillips, Don't Do Anything

THE TEMPEST

When working on my thesis, I found THE TEMPEST (1979) to be the most elusive of Derek Jarman’s films, primarily because it was then unavailable on video in the States. Naturally, it was released a month after I handed in my thesis. I’ve viewed it three times in the ensuing decade, and admittedly, it still feels pretty elusive. Although one of Jarman’s more relatively accessible efforts, the whole thing seems to emanate from another dimension, perhaps some backwater that time forgot--not an altogether unpleasant place, mind you, but definitely somewhere unfamiliar.

That's not to say THE TEMPEST is an outright flop (although Vincent Canby's infamous New York Times review effectively sunk its prospects in the States). But it may be the only Jarman film I don't entirely get. I can appreciate his sometimes ingenuous tweaking of the source material, I can applaud the actors' individual accomplishments, I can revel at the striking visual scheme (interior darkness alternating with a blue-filtered exterior), but for the most part, it just doesn't move me (with the exception of one scene I'll discuss later in this essay).



I've never read Shakespeare’s final play nor seen a production of it, so I’m uncertain how faithful an adaptation it is—not that Jarman’s overly concerned with historical accuracy. This was the play's first ever feature-length film version (Paul Mazurksy would direct his own very different, but equally idiosyncratic TEMPEST three years later). To forgo the excessive costs of visualizing the play’s desert island setting, Jarman transports it to a candlelit gothic castle, where a younger-than-usual Prospero the Magician (Heathcote Williams) holds court with his daughter Miranda, his slave Caliban and the angel Ariel (JUBILEE cast members Toyah Willcox, Jack Birkett and Karl Johnson, respectively).

Structuring the film as the dream of its lead character, THE TEMPEST is where Jarman begins to explicitly, gleefully fuck with period piece-related physical conventions (he did this a little in SEBASTIANE, but to nowhere near this extent). Rather than setting the action in one particular, well-defined era, the film compresses the clothes and artifacts of multiple eras into an instinctive, fluid whole. It pops and fizzes with such deliberate anachronisms as Miranda riding a hobby horse, sudden merry-go-round music, an indoor badminton match and Ariel’s very 20th century white jumpsuit. Those who complain about the lack of historical accuracy are, in Jarman’s mind, possibly missing the point: to favor the feelings and emotions of a text over its literal construct is to breathe life into and examine it from an emotional, psychological and personal viewpoint.

Although he remains sympathetic to the play’s basic outline and thematic structure, Jarman alters just about everything else. To mold a four-hour play into a 95-minute feature, it’s expected that he’d cut out a lot of dialogue and a few soliloquies, but what remains is fairly minimal. The few words spoken do not get in the way of the guttural, subterranean ambient score, which features found sounds (like manipulated breaths) more than actual music. In contrast, a scene with Caliban cradled in the arms and suckling on the tit of his naked, grotesque witch-mother Sycorax is straight out of a vintage John Waters film, though it feels far less in-your-face than Waters would have ever allowed.

Like JUBILEE, the film plays like a series of sketches, but instead of building momentum toward some sort of cathartic break-and-release, it just meanders along. There are some neat, succinct little scenes, such as the wonderfully childlike Miranda play-acting a courtship ritual with herself on a staircase. But as a dream film, much of it doesn't fully connect to the degree that his later, even more personal (and it must be said, more challenging) works do.

But then there's "Stormy Weather":



The film's climax comes with Miranda's wedding to Ferdinand, which, in keeping with the structure, is played as pure fantasy. It kicks off with a chorus of twenty or so youthful male sailors dancing a giddy, florid stovepipe, followed by a showering of rose petals. However, that's just an appetizer to the main course: regal, decked out grande dame Elisabeth Welch (rather resembling a septuagenarian, space-aged Patti LaBelle) stops by to serenade the lucky couple (and more explicitly the admiring sailors) with a show-stopping rendition of the song "Stormy Weather". The sequence is a little audacious and more than a little camp, yet oddly touching--it's rather affectionate without lapsing into parody. It's also more jolting and memorable than most of what preceded it, and it makes for a lovely bridge into the quiet, graceful final scene, where Ariel is set free and Prospero, alone, is left to exit one world and enter the next.

Appropriately enough, THE TEMPEST also left its director at a crossroads. One could entertain an alternate reality where Jarman immediately continued making similar works. Instead, Thatcherism and a transitioning British film industry intervened: he would not complete another feature for six years.

MID-YEAR REPORT

Here are my top ten films of '08 so far, in alphabetical order.

4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS
I first saw this tense, provocative, much-lauded Romanian film at Toronto last fall. On a second viewing during its Boston release in January, I loved it just as much.

CHRIS AND DON: A LOVE STORY
A documentary about the writer Chris Isherwood and his lover Don Bachardy and an illuminating portrait of any long-term relationship, gay or otherwise. (opens in Boston July 18)

THE FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON
Hou Hsiao-hsien's first film to be made outside Asia may be both his most accessible and poetic.

MAN ON WIRE
A splendid, moving account of Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk across the World Tade Center towers. (opens in Boston in August)

MONKEY WARFARE
A holdover from last year's IFF Boston, The Brattle Theatre played this sly little anarchic Canadian comedy for a weekend in April.

MY WINNIPEG
Guy Maddin outdoes himself yet again, combining fantasy, documentary, personal essay, and DETOUR femme fatale Ann Savage. (opens in Boston July 11)

REPRISE
Since my review from about a month ago, this Norwegian film has stayed with me more and more--in retrospect, its flaws seem minor in relation to the film's accomplishment and impact.

THE TRACEY FRAGMENTS
If it weren't for JUNO, you know this groundbreaking Canadian indie never would have played south of the border; more than even MY WINNIPEG, expect this one to be a future cult classic.

THE UNIVERSE OF KEITH HARING
One of the best artist docs I've seen, partially because it's so exuberant and well constructed, and partially because Haring was so one-of-a-kind.

THE VISITOR
My other favorite from Toronto, I haven't seen it again during its US release. But I'm ecstatic that a film that could've so easily fallen through the cracks has reached the robust (by indie standards) audience it deserves. It proves that in some rare cases, great reviews are all a little film needs.

Also worth seeing: ALEXANDRA, AT THE DEATH HOUSE DOOR, THE AXE IN THE ATTIC, THE BAND'S VISIT, CHOP SHOP, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD, JELLYFISH, PAGEANT, SONG SUNG BLUE, TOWELHEAD

P-TOWN SUNSET

I spent last weekend at the ever-fabulous, ever-exhausting Provincetown International Film Festival. Saw many great docs and one very good fiction feature; reviews are coming in another week (probably two).

Here are a few snapshots from when my time in town was winding down:

BIGGER, STRONGER, FASTER*

As a short kid growing up in Poughkeepsie in the 1980s, Christopher Bell and his brothers Mark and Mike were picked-on outcasts until the tremendously pumped-up likes of Hulk Hogan and Arnold Schwarzenegger came along and saturated American pop culture. In emulating their heroes, the three brothers became gym rats and all sought careers as professional wrestlers and weightlifters. All three also eventually tried anabolic steroids to stay competitive in a world of ever-stronger, more muscularly enhanced men (and women). Mark and Mike continued to use them; citing personal and moral issues regarding the drug, Christopher stopped using after awhile and made this documentary.

In examining the drug's increased usage in bodybuilding, wrestling and other professional sports, Bell strives to show how symptomatic it is of America's desire to be the best in everything, not settling for number two. For the most part, he succeeds. Obviously influenced by Michael Moore (whom he resembles vocally), Bell takes a far less slanted approach to his thesis. Although the subject matter is personal and set up as such, he approaches it from nearly every possible angle: inquiring about both the positive and negative effects of steroids, who uses them and why, and the subtle differences between them and the array of other performance enhancing drugs on and off the market. I was impressed with many of the unexpected things he considered: in one scene, he interviews a man living with AIDS who greatly benefited from the drug; in others, he uncovers the disturbing but telling rationalization many athletes (such as Barry Bonds) make for lying about using the drug: everyone else does it.

At times, Bell is both too earnest and a little exhaustive: there's enough material for one and a half films and as it drags a little in its last half-hour, the impact lessens. He also could stand to use less of Moore's shtick, such as the occasionally cutesy music or stunt (in one of the latter, he employs some illegal immigrants to make seem performance enhancing drugs in his home). But Bell makes a convincing case against illegal steroid use; as for whether they're "good" or "bad", he doesn't obscure the many shades of grey that question raises.

REPRISE

REPRISE is far from the first film to capture the ebullience of being a young adult, but it is one of the rare ones to consider the full spectrum of post-adolescence emotions. Both the thrill of having an entire adulthood ahead of one's self and all the anxieties and uncertainties that come with the territory are given equal measure.

We meet best friends Philip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Høiner) as they simultaneously deposit manuscripts of their first books into a mailbox. Immediately, an omniscient narrator accompanies a breathlessly paced montage of the subsequent acclaim and intellectually stimulating adventures bestowed among these two young men and their published works--but it's only an idyllic version of what they hope will happen. In actuality, Philip's book is published, but Erik's is rejected. Six months pass, and the film resumes with Erik and a few friends driving to a mental health facility to pick up Philip, who is recovering following a suicide attempt.

From there, the film proceeds forward, with a few carefully chosen flashbacks. We learn that Philip's collapse was partially brought on by the end of a brief but passionate, obsessive relationship with Kari (Viktoria Winge). As Erik takes care of his friend, finds a publisher for his own book and slowly grows disillusioned with his surroundings, Philip has lost the will to write, or do much of anything. When Kari re-enters his life, his behavior increasingly points towards signs of serious mental illness (rather than stress) that may be to blame for his malaise. All three leads are very good: Lie keeps Philip from coming across as too much of an enigma, Winge tackles the girlfriend role with grit and subtlety, and Klouman-Høiner holds our attention even as his character is the film's most normal and least angst-ridden.

In his first feature, Norwegian director Joachim Trier proves himself a skilled borrower: the narration is straight out of Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, the graphics and narrative construction are reminiscent of TRAINSPOTTING, and the overall attitude reeks of French New Wave (particularly Godard). Despite all this, he's not a poseur, for as REPRISE recalls these touchstones, it often feels nothing like them. The pacing and drained-out colors are more common to a Dogme film, and the tone is moody and atmospheric but not pretentious. As much as Trier loves his ambitious characters, there's a sense of detached wisdom towards them that keeps the film from feeling contrived.

TSUNAMI TIMES TWO

Here's something I was unable to fit into my Coolidge Corner photo essay. Two questions:



1. When was this picture taken?



2. And when was this picture taken? The answer to both:



Why, at the same time, of course. This sushi joint's original location was on the left; about two or so years ago, it opened up a second location on the right, meant to be a luncheon counter, I believe. And yet, the entire restaurant has moved over there, while the first location has been shuttered. And it's stayed this way ever since. How strange...

COOLIDGE CORNER TRAVELOGUE

Welcome to the neighborhood I work in.



Coolidge Corner is essentially the intersection of Beacon and Harvard Streets in Brookline, Mass., an affluent, liberal, heavily Jewish suburb that cuts right into Boston. In the decade plus I've lived in the area, I've always been close to this part of town, if never an actual resident of it. Both Boston University and the last place I worked at are within walking distance.



Looking Southbound down Harvard St., you can see where I currently work.



Here's a dramatic close-up.



...and a more accurate view of the actual building. Although the exterior is not too impressive (save for the glorious marquee, which was added on in 2002), the Coolidge Corner Theatre was what usually drew me to this neighborhood, long before I began working there four years ago.



The neighborhood is a business district and popular upscale shopping destination, not least because the C Train on the MBTA Green Line runs straight through it. However, easy access to public transit does little to prevent incessant traffic jams.



It's a close-knit community that has its share of local retailers and institutions.



This store, in particular, is the kind of decades-old eccentric hangout you wouldn't find anywhere else. Cluttered from floor to ceiling with such marginalia as games, gag gifts and smokes, I don't know how it survives in an area of skyrocketing property values. I rarely visit it myself.



Sadly, more and more local retailers can't keep up with the area's escalating rents. Until last summer, this space housed a used bookstore, but it couldn't compete with the likes of Barnes and Noble and Brookline Booksmith just around the corner.



This was once a locally-owned cafe/grocery store that was usually packed with customers; rumor has it that the owner went bankrupt.



Now it's this. Not as much fun, but at least this particular chain seems to be a good match for the neighborhood's latte-drinking, sandwich and salad consuming clientele. At lunch time, I can barely find a vacant table there.



Still, at least much of the architecture remains distinctive. Like this Art Deco building, home to an oddly space age-themed monument on its roof, celebrating the town's 300th anniversary.



Directly across from it sits the S. S. Pierce building, a Tudor-style castle. It doesn't fit in with its neighbors all that well, although it's arguably the intersection's most recognizable landmark (next to the marquee, of course) due to its imposing girth.



Here's a close-up on the building's detail. You just don't find this style of architecture anywhere else in the Boston area.



At least most of the incoming chains have held on to (or accentuated) their building's quirks, like this Peet's on Harvard St.



Part of the S. S. Pierce, this archway is actually a hidden entrance to a municipal parking lot. It's one of the neat little touches that gives Coolidge Corner a bit of character.

REPETITION

Enjoy this outtake from a project I'm working on for this blog.

JUBILEE

If it seems a little random that Derek Jarman chose to follow up a homoerotic biopic of Saint Sebastiane with a punk movie, well, it was 1977—the seminal year the Sex Pistols and the many bands inspired by them saturated British pop culture. Ever since he was an art student, Jarman always had an eye on his country’s counterculture while keeping himself at a critical distance from it. This peculiar approach—to be in the moment, but also apart from it—is what makes his work so frustrating for many; it’s also, decades later, what remains fascinating about this film in particular.

Jarman’s “in” to punk came when, through a mutual friend, he met Jordan, a model/actress/groupie who worked at Vivenne Westwood’s infamous SEX boutique. Taken by her striking, unusual style and fashion sense, he began filming her with his Super 8 camera. Some of this footage, consisting of Jordan dancing around a bonfire, made its way into JUBILEE, which Jarman structured around his new muse, her friends and other scenesters. Funding for the project came together thanks again to producer James Whaley. Filmed in the year of the Queen’s silver jubilee (but not released until 1978), those involved probably intended it as a harbinger of a new punk cinema.




Jordan stars as Amyl Nitrate, a nihilist “anti-historian” and ringleader of a group of mostly female friends, including unstable, flaming redhead Mad (Toyah Willcox), sex-crazed Crabs (“Little” Nell Campbell) and violent Bod (Jenny Runacre). There’s also Chaos, the girls' much-debased female French au pair; Sphinx and Angel, two brothers who are also homosexual lovers, and a wanna-be pop star named The Kid (in case of art imitating life, he's played by an unbelievably young Adam Ant). Meanwhile, Jarman views modern Britain as a garbage-strewn wasteland where the Royal Family has been booted out of Buckingham Palace and replaced by a recording studio run by the all-powerful Borgia Ginz (memorably played by the bald, blind, forever cackling Jack "Orlando" Birkett). Much of the film scans like post-apocalyptic Mike Leigh with a safety pin through his nose: characters sit around, talk, commit random acts of violence and debauchery, and struggle to make intellectual arguments that are often at odds with their emotions.

It all sounds fairly straightforward, but with Jarman, there’s always a catch. He opens the film with a lengthy sequence set in the time of Queen Elizabeth I (also played by Runacre). Assisted by her occultist, John Dee (Richard O’Brien—that’s two ROCKY HORROR vets in the cast if you’re keeping count), Elizabeth summons the spirit guide Ariel, who transports the trio to modern-day Britain, where they observe (but do not interact with) Amyl and her brood. This reoccurring framing device actually came from a separate screenplay Jarman had written years before about John Dee and alchemy, one of the director’s favorite subjects.

By structuring the film this way, Jarman sets up a glaringly obvious contrast: the ethereal scenes with Elizabeth I are set in the calm, idyllic, mist-filled countryside, while the “punk” scenes are abrasively loud, ugly and despairing. Where Jarman’s artistry shines through is in how he tempers this contrast. In the modern-day scenes, he occasionally allows for a moment of tenderness amongst all the attitude and irreverent, cod reggae versions of “Rule Britannia” and "Jerusalem"; in the historical scenes, he adds a smidgen of camp by casting Elizabeth’s “lady-in-waiting” as a bejeweled dwarf waddling around after her.

Mostly because the director was in the right place at the right time, the bulk of the film celebrates and aptly captures the punk aesthetic. It’s right up there with THE GREAT ROCK 'N' ROLL SWINDLE as a candidate for the movement’s time capsule. And yet, the film was widely rejected by its target audience, not least by Westwood (Jarman later proudly put her disparaging remarks about it on a t-shirt). With its measured pacing, esoteric framing device and long, talky scenes which sometimes threaten to drift off into the ether, it’s not difficult to see why most punks found JUBILEE underwhelming.

Although it gets off on the movement’s extreme visual style and playful anarchy, the film simultaneously lays bare punk’s limitations. Scene after scene of people just sitting around talking undercuts punk’s ability to accomplish anything. When characters actually leave the flat to do something, it’s often aggressive. Sometimes, the violence results in gallows humor, such as when Crabs and Bod asphyxiate a male gigolo, or when the gang murders an aging drag queen Lounge Lizard (Wayne County, whose pre-death musical number is not to be missed).

However, the violent acts soon have consequences. After a bunch of military police murder Sphinx and Angel in a bingo parlor, Bod and Mad track one of them down at his home and pummel him to death (right after Crabs sleeps with him, no less). During this particularly brutal interaction, Mad reaches such a fevered state of catharsis that at one point, she erupts into hysterical tears. Although that part was apparently unscripted (according to a great interview with the now middle-aged Willcox in the Criterion DVD), it sums up Jarman’s attitude toward the punk ideology, making explicit the difference between nihilism and revenge. The scene also highlights the remarkable 19-year-old Willcox in her first film role. Much more than Jordan, she emerges as the film’s star, mostly because her outrageous punk mask is far easier to see through.

Admittedly, the past/present contrast is a little schizophrenic at times—it really feels like one is watching two separate films. But without it, JUBILEE would just be another study of angry youth, a territory well-covered by filmmakers such as Alan Clarke. The Elizabethan scenes carry over the languid, poetic style of SEBASTIANE, while the punk scenes introduce Jarman's love-hate relationship with his country. This dual narrative is essential to understanding his aesthetic. Subsequent films thrive on such contrasts as they veer between sexual celebration and persecution, dreams of an idyllic English past and remorse at a crumbling English present/future, traditionally structured (yet unconventional) biographies/adaptations and instinctive, free-form experimental essays. JUBILEE concludes at the sea, always a place of serenity for Jarman both on-screen and off, as we will see in his next film, a typically idiosyncratic version of THE TEMPEST.

HELLO MILWAUKEE!

I don't post from YouTube that much, so allow me a little nostalgia. Here is a local commercial from my childhood: an ABC affiliate praising the metropolis that brought you "Laverne and Shirley". It's a little corny but seeing it after all these years, it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

And yes, that awful Channel 12 logo at the end is still in use today! Though the smiley half-sun is long gone...

FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON

A few years back, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien traveled to Japan to make CAFÉ LUMIÈRE, a charming, languid tribute to one of that country's greatest filmmakers, Yasujiro Ozu. In this, his first non-Asian effort, he has crafted the earlier film's Western equivalent. Inspired by Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 short THE RED BALLOON, Hou instinctively approaches Paris as a thoughtful tourist, though perhaps that term doesn't do him justice--he's more a seeker, freshly viewing France's day-to-day rhythms with the same sense of discovery as in his Japanese film.

One does not necessarily need to be familiar with Lamorisse's whimsical boy-and-his-balloon travelogue--it's merely a jumping off point for Hou. By way of a lost red balloon, we meet one of the three main characters, a young boy named Simon (Simon Iteanu), who is introduced standing outside a Metro station, looking upwards and begging the titular object (which slowly comes into our sight) to return. In contrast to Lamorisse's film, the boy never gets his balloon back, but it remains a constant, often ghostly presence as Hou intermittently, leisurely tracks its whereabouts: bobbing in and out of the Metro, floating past windows and skylights, and eventually gliding over the Parisian skyline.

The other two principal characters are Simon's frazzled mother, Suzanne (a terrific, bleach blonde Juliette Binoche), who makes her living narrating puppet shows, and the comparatively more serene Song (Song Fang), a Taiwanese film student (and sly stand-in for the director) whom Suzanne hires as her son's babysitter. Half the film is set in Suzanne's tiny, cramped apartment; the other follows Song and Simon as they stroll through Paris, the former making her own student film homage to THE RED BALLOON with her video camera. Not much else happens, apart from a trip out of town to meet with a legendary Asian puppeteer and Suzanne's squabbles with her tenants, and those incidents feel vestigial at best.

As always, Hou is more concerned with emphasizing textures: the glow of a hidden side street, the way a gorgeous, melancholy reoccurring piano theme casts shadows over sidewalks and parks, and most spectacularly, the title-referencing motifs that subtly surface throughout, from a simple red handbag to the soft, pink glow emanating from an overhead lamp to even Simon's head of curly red locks. This is Hou is at his most inviting, engaging and poetic and I hope he considers filming something similar in America--maybe he'll have a better go at it than Wong Kar Wai recently has.