5 February 2021

Lucie Borleteau’s Fidelio, l'Odyssée d'Alice | Fidelio: Alice's Odyssey (2014)

 

Fidelio, l'Odyssée d'Alice, Lucie Borleteau's first feature, is an unusual film in that conventional gender roles are reversed. Here we have an old cargo ship in which the highly attractive Alice (Ariane Labed) starts working. She leaves behind her Norwegian boyfriend, graphic novelist Félix (Anders Danielsen Lie) and discovers that the captain Gaël  (Melvil Poupaud) is her first love from some years before when she was a trainee.

The inevitable happens and Alice and Gaël get together again sexually, although for a clearly intelligent young woman Alice is stupid enough to take a selfie of them both in an uncompromising position, which when they return to dry land Félix discovers on checking Alice's photos. 

Odyssey? Well, Alice may have covered a number of places, but she's no female Ulysses, just as Félix is no faithful cat: he's been out on the tiles and in spite of Alice wanting him back he's not too sure about that.

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