(USA, 76
min.)
Dir.
Christine Beebe
Programme: World
Showcase (World Premiere)
Felix Austria! is
sure to add some whimsical character to your day of Hot Docs screenings. Felix Austria! takes audiences on a
whirlwind treasure hunt as one academic tries to piece together a peculiar
mystery between an ordinary American and the last descendant of the Holy Roman
Empire. This delightfully strange film by Christine Beebe is an eccentric character
study that is as colourful and personable as its subject is.
Curiosity transforms Felix’s enthusiasm into an adventure as
he sets forth to learn more about Herbert Hinkel and discover the relationship
between Hinkel and Hapsburg that exists beyond the letters. (What compelled a
monarch to write to a commoner for six decades?) Felix eventually packs a case
of colourful suits, ties, and ascots as he flies to Europe for a one-on-one
with Otto von Hapsburg himself. The encounter with Hapsburg is especially
important for Felix since his interest in Austro-Hungarian Empire has morphed
into a kind of mania that seeps into his subconscious and manifests itself as
all sorts of peculiar monarchical dreams. (It’s not abnormal for academics to
have nightmares about their work, but Felix’s dreams are a whole other kind of
psychoanalytic craziness.)
Felix’s dream sequences inject a unique breath of life into
the film as Felix Austria! presents
Felix’s dreams as surreal—and hilarious—animated interludes. The stunning
hand-drawn animation has an eye-catching eccentricity and an impressive
attention to detail. The otherworldly cartoonishness of the dream sequences
offsets nicely the low-res Verité documentation of Felix’s task, and transforms
his humble journey into a quixotic quest.
The dream sequences also tie together the various threads of
Felix’s life that Beebe introduces throughout the film. Crucial to constructing
a complicated dimensionality to Felix is the storyline that outlines Felix’s connection
to his father, who is dying of Huntington’s brain disease. Huntington’s carries
a genetic probability of fifty percent, so Felix knows that it’s a flip of the
coin whether he will see the same fate as his father. Felix is reluctant to
discuss the looming fear of Huntington’s directly, but the dream sequences
unearth unspoken fears and conflicts of identity. The quest to uncover the
mystery of the pen pal relationship between Hinkel and Hapsburg, which
implicitly reveals something about Felix himself, therefore has a limited timeframe.
If Felix’s mind deteriorates at the rate of Huntington’s power, then the
significance of his archive of correspondence could be lost forever.
Felix Austria! is
a highly enjoyable collage of biography and fantasy, history and art. Quirky
and original, Beebe’s film is a welcome oddball adventure of escapism and self-discovery amidst the festival’s
dark and often depressing docs. One can’t help but wish that Felix’s climactic
visit with Hapsburg received a little more attention (at 76 minutes, the film
could probably have afforded the sequence more screentime), but the charm of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire lives on in Felix’s eccentric shrine to Hinkel and
Hapsburg’s correspondence and his even more peculiar dreams.
Rating: ★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
Felix Austria! screens:
Monday, April 29 – 3:30 pm at the Scotiabank
Saturday, May 4 – 6:30 pm at the Regent
Please visit www.hotdocs.ca for more info on films,
tickets, and show times.
