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The Adventures of Felix (2001)
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Reviews Counted:39
Fresh:27
Rotten:12
Average Rating:6.3/10
Synopsis: Felix (Sami Bouajila) is an HIV-positive thirtysomething homosexual. In this film about family and the discovery of self, Felix is first seen jauntily riding his bike. When he gets laid off from... Felix (Sami Bouajila) is an HIV-positive thirtysomething homosexual. In this film about family and the discovery of self, Felix is first seen jauntily riding his bike. When he gets laid off from work and starts cleaning out his dead mother's house, Felix uncovers some old letters from his father, who he's never met. The discovery takes Felix on a hitchhiking journey to Marseilles to search for the family that he never had. On the way, he meets a number of quirky characters identified by intertitles that describe each one respectively as his little brother, his grandmother, his cousin, his sister, and finally his father; in what becomes his surrogate family. Felix kills time on the highway singing songs as he sashays through the emerald fuzz of the French countryside, waiting for a car to pick him up. He's at home in a field of buttercups, flying a kite, or crooning to the sun to come out and shine, and he never misses his favorite soap opera about a viciously superficial family that's out to get each other. In the end, directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau allow Felix to show us that the bonds within family are about much more than blood. [More]
Starring: Sami Bouajila, Ariane Ascaride, Pierre-Loup Rajot, Patachou
Starring: Sami Bouajila, Ariane Ascaride, Pierre-Loup Rajot, Patachou, Maurice Benichou
Director: Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau
Director: Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau
Screenwriter: Olivier Ducastel, Jacques Martineau
Producer: Philippe Martin
Studio: Winstar
Reviews for The Adventures of Felix
delightful new road comedy by the equally delightful directors/lovers Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau.
It would all be too obviously feel-good if Ducastel and Martineau weren't also tuned in to the liberating drift of the open highway and a sharp native humor that adds needed flesh and blood to their walking metaphors.
I can’t even begin to imagine what a crude American director would choose to do with it, and don’t want to.
Narratively, what we have here is a basic road movie, a genre that too often doubles as an excuse to hide a flawed script -- merely an episodic series of loose vignettes.
We realize early on that nothing much is going to happen ... and it's hard to stay fully engaged with a film that, frontal nudity notwithstanding, plays it so safe.
Although the movie never so much as flirts with melodrama, there is still a bittersweet undercurrent throughout Adventures of Felix.
Bouajila's winning performance, and the film's timely tolerance, make Felix a movie road trip you'll want to take.
The greatest accomplishment of writer-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau is that they can sustain subtle expressions of love, both physical and emotional... while also allowing these same characters to deal with the shortcomings of humanity.
There is a sort of sun-washed gay complacency to Adventures of Felix, a streak of greeting card glibness.
I like to see gay characters in films, but filmmakers can't specifically rely on their gayness to make them interesting.
An odyssey of self-discovery of much charm, humor and admirable subtlety.
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