Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s non-Chinese-language films, Café Lumière (2003) and Le Voyage du ballon rouge (Flight of the Red Balloon, 2007), stand as pivotal moments of his filmography, as the director raised his status to the level of transnational auteur by making commissioned films outside Taiwan. Café Lumière, an invited work from Shochiku Studio, provides a fresh look at the late Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu’s recurring theme of cross-generational conflict. Le Voyage du ballon rouge, commissioned by the Musée d’Orsay, pays tribute to one of the most beloved children’s films in France. Both Café Lumière and Le Voyage du ballon rouge are more than a Taiwanese director’s homage to world cinema auteurs. Like Tsai Ming-liang’s What Time Is It There? (2001), Le Voyage du ballon rouge incorporates a story of a Chinese woman in the French capital and the dialogic relations between Taiwan and France (or Taipei and Paris). In Café Lumière, Hou shows how Taiwan shares a modern temporality with Japan, underlining cultural resonances and the attractiveness of the Tokyo metropolis to Asian audiences.

Hou Hsiao-hsien is one of the most discussed filmmakers in Asian cinema today. The main reason for this extensive attention is his subdued aesthetic, which has left an extraordinary mark on world cinema. Many have tried to fit Hou into existing categories and paradigms of art cinema and have sought ready-made explanations for the origins of his filmmaking style. A common, generalised cultural explanation is the textual quality of ‘Chineseness’ in Hou’s work; however, this approach is reductionist, ignoring the specificity and histories of Taiwan that gave rise to Hou’s unique career. Another common approach is to emphasise Hou’s influences, as film scholars often argue how the director’s style resembles, echoes, or recalls certain auteurs of world cinema. Formalist scholarship on Hou often tries to identify the resemblances and affinities between Hou and Ozu. Such approaches are not without merit, but attention must also be paid to the differences between them. Hou, however, claims that he never saw an Ozu film until after he had made A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985), by which time the often-conspicuous comparisons between him and the Japanese master were already proliferating.