Adventures of Félix
Thursday 26 February 2015
Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau | France, 2000 | 95 mins | Cert 15
Félix (Sami Bouajila) is an almost unbelievably upbeat young Frenchman who manages to infect nearly everyone he meets with his beguiling, disarming and weirdly un-irritating positivity in the face of life’s various challenges. Félix and his joie de vivre could be seen as being all the more impressive for the fact that – unlike that better-known icon of modern French cinematic chirpiness, ‘Amélie’ – he is dark-skinned, gay, and HIV-positive.
Deciding to take a trip from his home town of Dieppe to travel all the way to Marseille in the south of France in a romantic attempt to meet the father he never knew, Félix sets in train one of the most fascinating and genuinely enjoyable road movies of recent years. In a series of episodic set pieces he encounters different characters from a diverse French demographic, none of whom he is biologically related to, but each of whom functions as a potential new brother, sister, grandmother or cousin.
Drôle de Félix is a wonderful, little-seen masterpiece from the French director team Ducastel & Martineau. Flying in the face of pessimistic and divisive narratives about France’s irreparable ‘tensions’, it is realistic both about the realities of racism and neo-fascism and the potential for an uncrushable spirit and genuine joyousness despite (or perhaps because of) everything.