If you know that AIDS has your days numbered, what would you do before your seemingly inevitable death? In The Adventures of Felix (Drôle de Félix), the decision of Félix (played by Sami Bouajila) is to see the birthfather who abandoned his birthmother before his birth. When the film begins, Félix, a dark-skinned Arab, has learned that he has lost his bartending job in Dieppe, Normandy, due to the takeover and restructuring of the ferryboat company P&O by Hovercraft. Félix then goes home to his lover Daniel (played by Pierre-Loup Rajot), a schoolteacher. He announced that he will be taking a five-day journey, hitchhiking along the coast, and he promises to meet Daniel at the Marseilles train station. At the beginning of his trip, he witnesses two Frenchmen murdering an Arab in Rouen. Although one of the thugs beats up Félix to keep him from talking, telling him that police would never believe an Arab anyway, he goes to the police station but then loses his nerve and travels on. Thereafter, each of the adventures is identified by an on-screen title. “My Little Brother” is the next episode, in which he befriends Jules, a seventeen-year-old art student (played by Charly Sergue), takes him to a gay disco, steals a car for a spin together, returns the car to the place where they found it, and sleeps with him for the night but does not have sex. In “My Mother,” he is awakened from sleep on a park bench by Matilde Fermin (played by Patachou), goes to her house, assists her in unpacking her groceries and in moving furniture, listens to the story of her life, and then stays overnight. In the morning, after telling her about his quest, he departs. “My Cousin” is an episode with a macho railroad employee (played by Philippe Garziano), who picks him up hitchhiking, and soon the two have sex in the bushes, including a scene with frontal nudity. In “My Sister,” Isabelle (played by Ariane Ascaride), a plainclothes police officer, picks him up along the highway; after she transports three children to the homes of their fathers for Father’s Day, she gets into an auto accident in which Félix is hurt, but she and the driver agree not to report the incident. Although she sleeps in the same bed with him for the night, there is no sex, and she infers from what he says in his sleep that he is the missing witness from Rouen. But she does not insist that he must come forward as the witness because he might then report that she caused the auto accident. In “My Father,” he sits down alongside an old man (played by Pascal Billon) who is fishing for the sake of fishing, and the two talk. After telling him about his quest, the old man persuades him not to meet his father, as no useful purpose can be served. As the conversation is just the father-son dialog that Félix sought, he decides not to spoil the quest by seeing his birthfather. In the final scene, he finally arrives at the Marseilles train station to meet his lover, albeit somewhat later than anticipated. Daniel suggests that they take a boat to Corsica for a real vacation, and they depart. Written and directed by Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau, The Adventures of Félix is a classic film of the “road” genre in which the lead character discovers a lot about himself and others as he encounters a variety of people coping with life in various ways. The film will clearly make the French very proud of their culture, which clearly provides the wherewithal for everyone to deal reasonably well with problems in their lives. The movie is supposed to be a comedy, but French humor unfortunately will sail over the heads of most Americans, especially since the humorous French title is mistranslated. For those who have AIDS, the message is that life is too precious to squander on meaningless quests; showing love in many different ways is its own reward. For those who have never seen men kissing before, the passion of the many kisses of the two lovers will perhaps be a surprise but definitely something to envy, for the only close family in the entire film is the gay couple, who provide mutual respect and derive joy in sharp contrast with the mixed-up heterosexuals encountered along the way. If ever there were a film to demonstrate in actions rather than words the reason why gay couples deserve to receive Certificates of Marriage in order to recognize profound life-long commitments, The Adventures of Félix is certainly the one. MH