Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau | Drôle de Félix (The Adventures of Felix) / 2000

off to visit dad

by Douglas Messerli

 

Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau (screenwriters and directors) Drôle de Félix (The Adventures of Felix) / 2000

 

The joyful and carefree Félix (the wonderful Sami Bouajila) is laid off from his job as barman on the ferries from Dieppe to Newhaven, England, a company downsized because of the building of the Chunnel (the Euro Tunnel) which permitted train and car access from Calais to England. Living happily with his lover Daniel (Pierre-Loup Rajot), Félix takes his severance with aplomb, and determines just to relax for a few days, watching his favorite soap-opera to which he’s become addicted due to the fact that it is so popular with many of the ferry’s daily riders.

      Determined to sell his house in which his mother recently died, he packs up her possessions, only to discover a correspondence between her and the father he has never seen, having been born after his father left. Inexplicably Félix determines, while his lover is away on a business trip, to hitchhike to Marseilles where his unknown father apparently still lives. Handing Daniel a ticket for Marseilles, he promises to meet him there.

    As a gay Arab who is HIV-positive, one would imagine that this character might be somewhat chary of undertaking such an adventure, but not the almost always upbeat Félix, who packs up a backpack with some clothes and his HIV medications and purchases a new gay rainbow kite, heading off on a new adventure “on the road.”

     Almost immediately he witnesses a racist attack, two men attempting to toss a body into a river. One of the assailants, noting his observation of their activities, take after him as he goes on the run, taking brief refuge in a bar who bartender seems to know the assailant, and assures Félix that he is a good man, whole nonetheless momentarily offering him some protection. Soon after, however, the attacker catches him and begins to beat him, before Félix once again escapes. He decides to report it to the police, but observing them manhandle another Arab man, he finds himself unable to go through with reporting the incident—an act which will haunt him throughout the rest of his journey.

      Soon after he meets a young gay man, Jules (Daniel Sergue) attempting to draw Aristotle, a figure that appears on a nearby cathedral. The teen is working in the dark and not a very skilled artist. The ever-friendly Félix offers to draw it for him, himself producing a rather crude rendering as a token of friendship. The boy, however, completely charmed by the older man sneaks him into his room, where Félix, exhausted from his adventures and, we soon perceive, as a consequence of his medicines, quickly falls to sleep, much to the frustration of Jules, who obviously is seeking sex.

      But the next morning, as the two go out for breakfast, the boy spots a woman who has left her cars in her auto and, presuming that the secretive Félix must be on the run for some criminal action, suggests they steal the car. Caught up in the boy’s imagination, Félix, with his new partner in crime, does just that—until they realize that the woman has left her baby in the back seat. They sneak back to the scene of the crime, where by this time the woman has discovered that both her car and child are missing, Jules handing over the baby to a young girl with the instructions to deliver it up to the woman. Behind the wheel, the two quickly go speeding off.

 

     In another town, Félix takes Jules to a gay bar where, for the first time in his confined life, the boy gets to dance and flirt with other gay men. But Félix purposely tells a bar owner that the cute boy is underage, and the police are quickly called, the two escaping. Félix tells Jules to wait on a nearby doorstop while he gets the car, but it’s clear his intentions area to cut and run. The boy has begun to show his impatient with Félix for not having sex with him, while the nonchalant older Arab who is HIV positive has no intentions of serving as the boy’s first love.

      No matter; as Jules waits, another man with whom he briefly flirted at the bar has discovered him alone on the stoop. Surely he won’t be so shy with the eager kid, who Félix has come to see as a “younger brother.”

      Leaving the car in an open field, so that the police can easily find it and return it to its rightful owner, the adventurer continues his trek on foot.

      Now the pattern of this utterly charming film has not been determined. In his search for his long missing father, Félix will discover a series of individuals who will become like family to him, a family of fellow French folk who will provide him with a far deeper sense of joy and love than his own parents have been able to provide.

 

    He next meets up with one of the most charming of his "family" members, a hearty elderly widow, Mathilde Firmin (Patachou) who engages the seemingly idle young man, sleeping on a park bench, to help carry her groceries back to her house (they, in fact, consist of only a few items and are very light to carry), and once she has got him into the house feeding him and insisting that he help her out moving furniture the she has long thought ugly but which her own son never found the time to remove. In the process she explains her life, how she married almost out of revenge for having lost the man she truly loved, and how she never loved her husband and was actually relieved with his death. She and Félix indeed become fast friends, she insisting that he’s not really interested at all about finding his father but is seeking something us in the journey, which by this time the film’s viewer might also realize.

      As alarmingly honest and down-to-earth as Félix is filled with delight, the two make a lovely vision of grandson and “grandmother,” she helping him work around the problems of his own parents by explaining her disappointment with her own daughter and son.

      On the road again, Félix encounters a robust railroad man (Philippe Garziano), a kind of older kissing “cousin” with whom he finally has sex.

     And soon after, on yet another adventurous side-trip he meets a woman, Isabelle (Ariane Ascaride), who is perfectly ready to let him ride with her, as long as he is not in a hurry, since she has to deliver up her three children in the backseat to their various fathers. The children quickly adopt the loveable Félix as their new father, explaining to him how they themselves all prefer one of the other boy’s father better than their own, and would prefer spending time on his farm.

 

     Determined not go through a town that voted rightist, Félix maps out a crazy route which ultimately takes them everywhere but where they want to go. But finally, having delivered up the kids, Isabelle knows of an expensive hotel nearby. However, the police have closed down the hotel, having captured the murderer who has chased after Félix days before. The two seek out another bed, which they share, this time as brother and “sister,” Isabelle guessing his secret, that he was the famed witness (now mentioned in national news) to the Arab’s death. Finally, Félix is forced to justify his actions, with Isabelle insisting that he still visit the police, even though they’ve finally captured the wanted man.

      In the last meet-up with such wonderfully eccentric individuals, Félix encounters a late middle-aged man fishing, not really attempting to catch fish, he explains, as to find an activity that might get him out of his unhappy home for a while so that he can think things out. Our hero, well-skilled with kites since Dieppe is the home of the national kite convention each year, shows his new “father” to entertain himself in a far more delightful manner, and before long he has the man engaged in kite-flying, certainly more exciting that throwing a line into a polluted waterway where, even if he caught fish it wouldn’t safe to eat.

 

     Arriving in Marseilles just in time to meet up with Daniel, who has just arrived by train, Félix hugs and kisses his lover, amazed that for the first time since he had known him, Daniel has shaved his small chin which always carried a beard. He is like a new man, Félix insists; but Daniel also notes that something has changed with Félix who, following the fisherman’s advice, tells Daniel that he has decided to let his father remain anonymous. The two decide, instead, to take a ferry to Corisca.

     Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s lovely fable is so filled with life and joy that it is almost a bit overwhelming, maybe a bit too bright, after having seen so many hundreds of films, long and short, with dark and fearful portraits of surviving gay life. Here, no one except the evil duo early on in this film, even question the heroes’ race, religion, or sexuality, accepting him for who he is, even with his numerous canisters filled with pills (indeed Mathilde wants just such a container for her own pills). Nothing comes between this happy couple’s love but the five day-hiatus wherein Félix discovers the family that has so long been missing in his life. Yet the adventures of this picaresque are far more interesting and engaging than any gay boy’s tribulations about coming out, any gay lesbian’s fears that she may lose her lover, or any gay man’s terror over offending his family by revealing the secrets of his sexual desires. Just as he name suggests, at film’s end we recognize just how lucky we have been to join Félix on his adventures to visit his dad.

Los Angeles, September 13, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).