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Film Review By John Demetry
Writers-directors Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's The Adventures of Felix is nothing less than a miracle. A Queer film that not only examines the place of queerness in society and nature, it actually argues for its necessity! In an audacious AIDS-era testimony, Felix brings the sun. The choreography of film space and of film narrative provides an effervescent metaphor. No political rancor here; just the real deal. The wide, wondrous Cinemascope frame acts as an Impressionistic window on the world, constantly scanning and expanding the view - flowers, trees, water dancing with cars, roads, boats. The Cinemascope lens compresses space, giving even the air a vital density, the light a heightened iridescence. Ducastel-Martineau trace the events of Felix's hitchhiking trip across France to Marseilles to meet the father he's never known. Being laid off during a workers' strike and the resulting tension with his partner are the felicitous, modern expressions of rootlessness that incite the journey. Each of his encounters with strangers along the way are mini-narratives preceded by a title: "My Little Brother," "My Grandmother," "My Cousin," "My Sister," and, finally, "My Father." "What is my place in the world?" is the ingenuous question that Felix hopes to answer. The question is never posed explicitly, but rather introduced through the film's pondering of the metaphysical amidst the physical. The opening shot of the film features Felix riding his bike next to the ocean while singing to himself the French pop oldie that plays on the soundtrack. The camera tracks at a consistent pace while Bouajila's position oscillates in the frame between long shot and close up. One might expect the dancing citizens of French New Wave director Jacques Demy's Umbrellas of Cherbourg or Young Girls of Rochefort to join Felix.
The trajectories of chance and destiny, of existential challenge and faith in The Adventures of Felix brings the legacy of the French New Wave up to date by focusing on a gay, French-Arabian, HIV-positive protagonist. Although each of these labels proves imperative to the journey, Bouajila supplies inventive twists to his characterization that come out with each encounter - in the charged space between people. In one moment, Felix offers the following earnest rebuff to a young admirer: "I love you like a brother." In another, he makes a little boy cry during an argument about the distinction between "father" and "stepfather" - where the kid's logic, while inaccurate, feels irrefutably right. In the final encounter, Felix teaches his "Father" to fly a rainbow-colored kite. Ducastel-Martineau's affectionate, yet unforced, technique allows Felix the freedom, will, and complexity usually afforded only to white, hetero characters. Felix gets the glory too when the camera circles around Felix and his partner during their rendezvous in Marseilles - a move of triumph out of the musicals Duscatel-Martineau clearly love.
It's undeniable: Racial/sexual diversity is now aesthetically necessary to keep both the film medium and pop expression adventurous. No wonder I had to listen to Erasure's Cowboy CD to sustain the movie's buzz. The titles of that CD and this movie make the connection clear: trailblazing subversions of the cultural myths of masculinity programmed into popular narratives. The eclectic soundtrack and the story chapters in The Adventures of Felix, like Erasure's album of songs sung Andy Bell, provide the variety of relationships - of places in the world - to enrich and exalt Queer experience. Bell stands out in the call-and-response with the backup singers and the dance beats. It's an invitation to share his diverse emotional expressions - as in Bell's declarations of impending love ("Your love's gonna take a man") in Don't Say Your Love Is Killing Me and of past love ("I did not mean to harm my love") in Save Me Darling. Ducastel-Martineau similarly position Felix/Bouajila in their choreographed vision of life and performance. Defining the moral center of the film, the filmmakers detail space through Felix's point of view during significant moments. Felix makes sure the coast is clear for some heated kissing-cousins action and gauges a police station after seeing an Arab man beaten by two drunken Frenchmen - action and non-action putting each other in moral relief. Tenderness is displayed when Felix's "Sister" holds him during his confession of the fear he felt in the police station. It's a tears-and-pride moment in which Bouajila's performance reinforces more complicated notions of heroism. The filmmakers and Bouajila absolve guilt while dramatizing responsibility. Like Erasure, Ducastel-Martineau's pop pleasures reconcile social conflicts. At the end, Felix has changed. He discovers that his absent partner has as well, kissing his newly-shaved face. Demy, Erasure, and Ducastel-Martineau all share this hard-earned truth: There is no guilt in pleasure like this. |
Sami Bouajila stars in The Adventures of Felix
"Grandmother" and Bouajila 
© 1997-2002 BEI