‘Flight of the Red Balloon’ | 2 ½ stars

Movies have an advantage over real life: They can edit out the dull parts.

Unless the movie is made by Taiwanese director Hsiao-hsien Hou. Hou revels in the dull parts.

His “Flight of the Red Balloon” (showing at the Tivoli) introduces us to a handful of unremarkable Parisians and asks us to sit quietly for two hours, watching them do not much of anything.

Some have proclaimed this film a masterpiece of humanistic observation. Others compare it to watching paint dry.

I’m stuck in between. Hou’s fascination with people is palpable. But his abhorrence of conventional drama can wear out its welcome.

In the opening moments of the film a boy, Simon (Simon Iteanu), stands at the entrance of a Paris Metro station trying to talk a runaway red balloon down out of a tree. He finally gives up and boards a train, only to be followed by the balloon. This orb of inflated latex appears to have a mind of its own. Periodically it will show up, hovering around a rooftop or floating outside a window. Clearly it’s a reference to the famous 1956 short film “The Red Balloon,” in which a red balloon follows a little boy around Paris.

But despite this fantastic entity, the movie is mostly about people and down-to-earth.

We meet Simon’s mother, Suzanne (Juliet Binoche), an actress always at wit’s end about something. We’re there when Simon is introduced to Song (Song Fang), a Chinese student hired to be his new nanny. Song is a filmmaker and a big fan of the 1956 “Red Balloon.”

So what happens? Well, Suzanne seethes because her husband, Pierre, has split (taking with him Simon’s older sister) to pursue a writing career. She’s left to manage their apartment house and to cope with a deadbeat tenant — an old friend of Pierre’s. We also see her working on a puppet production based on Chinese folk tales.

Simon and Song wander around Paris. She begins making a movie about the boy and a red balloon.

And … and … and that’s about it. Hou exhibits no interest in dramatic construction.

At the same time, he and cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing employ a rigorous visual aesthetic. Their stationary camera observes in long, uninterrupted takes. There’s no editing within a scene, no close-ups. No incidental music. Just life, or a pretty accurate simulation of life.

After “Flight of the Red Balloon” most conventional movies do seem mannered and manipulative. But here’s the thing — most of us take great pleasure in those manners and manipulations.