The road movie in France has gotten a lot less edgy since Bertrand Blier’s 1974 Going Places, if Olivier Ducastel & Jacques Martineau’s The Adventures of Félix is any indication. True to his name, Félix (an ebullient Sami Bouajila) is one happy cat. Laid off from his job on the docks of Dieppe, he kisses boyfriend Daniel (Pierre-Loup Rajot) goodbye, buys a kite, and sets out to hitchhike to Marseilles to find the father he never met. It seems the missing dad is the only thorny issue in his life, and even that, as one of the more intriguing characters he meets along the way points out, is probably a pretext. In truth, the absent dad doesn’t resonate much more than the crises we see dramatized on Félix’s favorite soap opera, and neither do the glimpses of anti-gay and anti-Arab prejudice, or even the crime that Félix witnesses and that gnaws at his conscience. This inconsequentiality, however, is part of the film’s charm and grace (it bravely resists closure), along with Bouajila’s seductive lack of substance.