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Fidelio: Alice's Odyssey

Thirty-year-old Alice's occupation is rather unusual for a woman: she works as an engineer on a freighter. She loves her job and does it competently but even in a greasy blue overall a woman... Read all Thirty-year-old Alice's occupation is rather unusual for a woman: she works as an engineer on a freighter. She loves her job and does it competently but even in a greasy blue overall a woman will be a woman, with her heart, her desires and her seduction - In such conditions can a... Read all Thirty-year-old Alice's occupation is rather unusual for a woman: she works as an engineer on a freighter. She loves her job and does it competently but even in a greasy blue overall a woman will be a woman, with her heart, her desires and her seduction - In such conditions can an all-male crew really remain totally insensitive to her charms? A situation all the more ... Read all

• Lucie Borleteau
• Clara Bourreau
• Mathilde Boisseleau
• Ariane Labed
• Melvil Poupaud
• Anders Danielsen Lie
• 5 User reviews
• 46 Critic reviews
• 7 wins & 7 nominations

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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia First feature film signed by actress-short film maker Lucie Borleteau.
• Connections References Titanic (1997)
• Soundtracks Caressé moin Creole traditional

User reviews 5

• Apr 21, 2018
• How long is Fidelio: Alice's Odyssey? Powered by Alexa
• December 24, 2014 (France)
• Fidelio: Alice's Journey
• Port, Dakar, Senegal (first port of call)
• Why Not Productions
• Apsara Films
• Arte France Cinéma
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• Jul 19, 2015

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• Runtime 1 hour 37 minutes
• D-Cinema 96kHz 5.1

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Fidelio, Alice's Odyssey

2014, Drama, 1h 37m

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Fidelio, alice's odyssey   photos.

Alice joins a freighter's crew as a replacement engineer, and learns the captain is one of her old flames. As the voyage goes on, her feelings for the captain are rekindled.

Genre: Drama

Original Language: French (France)

Director: Lucie Borleteau

Producer: Marine Arrighi de Casanova , Pascal Caucheteux , Olivier Père

Writer: Lucie Borleteau , Clara Bourreau

Release Date (Streaming): Mar 25, 2017

Box Office (Gross USA): $3.0K

Runtime: 1h 37m

Production Co: Apsara Films, arte France Cinéma, Why Not Productions

Cast & Crew

Ariane Labed

Melvil Poupaud

Anders Danielsen Lie

Pascal Tagnati

Jean-Louis Coulloc'h

Bogdan Zamfir

Nathanaël Maïni

Manuel Ramírez

Thomas Scimeca

Lucie Borleteau

Screenwriter

Clara Bourreau

Marine Arrighi de Casanova

Pascal Caucheteux

Olivier Père

Isabelle Tillou

Executive Producer

Clément Quentin

Simon Beaufils

Cinematographer

Marie-Clotilde Chery

Sound Engineer

Sidney Dubois

Production Design

Sophie Bégon

Costume Design

Guy Lecorne

Film Editing

Edouard Morin

Sound Editor

Thomas de Pourquery

Original Music

Mélissa Petitjean

Sound Mixer

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Fidelio: Alice’s Journey

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by  Lucie Borleteau

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Alice is a sailor. While her partner Félix waits for her on land, she sets off as second mechanic on the Fidelio, an old freighter. On board, she discovers not only that her predecessor has just died, but also that the skipper is none other than the first great love of her life. Alice finds a notebook in her cabin, apparently that of the former mechanic, and on reading its contents – accounts of mechanical problems, sexual conquests and lovelorn emotions – finds, oddly, that they mirror her own concerns. As they make stops at various ports, dealing with life aboard alongside an all-male crew and the swell and pitch of her romantic feelings, the young woman tries to stay on course.

• Fidelio: Alice’s Journey [FR] (2014): film profile , film review , trailer , interview: Lucie Borleteau

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Film Review: ‘Fidelio: Alice’s Journey’

In shadowing a female engineer at sea, this seductive love triangle toys with conservative notions of desire against a seldom-examined, male-dominated work environment.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Easily the most fascinating film to come along and challenge traditional gender roles in the past year, “Fidelio: Alice’s Journey” chronicles a sexually liberated female sailor’s voyage of self-discovery aboard an old freighter, where she fights for respect among the randy crew — including the handsome captain, with whom she shares a romantic past — while her faithful partner anxiously awaits her return. Anchored by a courageous lead performance and steered by a fresh-voiced distaff helmer showing impressive command of both atmosphere and subtext, Lucie Borleteau’s emotionally complex, logistically daunting debut should find receptive berth among discriminating fests and specialty venues.

Likened by her landlocked lover, Felix (Anders Danielsen Lie), to a mermaid at several points, Alice (Ariane Labed) seems to become a different person when at sea. The Alice he knows is passionate and attentive, almost girlishly smitten with her man. Then duty calls, intruding upon their idyll as Alice is drawn to the ocean, where she must toughen her skin in order to survive for weeks at a time as the lone female assigned to a vast cargo ship called the Fidelio — whose none-too-subtle allusions to faithfulness are not only central to Borleteau’s examination, but also echoed by a diary she finds in her cabin.

The journal belongs to the aging vessel’s previous engineer, whom Alice has been called in to replace. Reading her predecessor’s most intimate (and frequently carnal) confessions, she takes her post as a marine mechanic amid so many sex-starved men, fending off their snide jokes and inappropriate advances from the moment she steps aboard. And yet, being a mature, 30-year-old woman, and French, she reserves the right to engage with her colleagues without that meaning they are suddenly entitled to objectify her. Naturally, this makes for a complex work environment — especially since the Fidelio’s captain, Gael (Melvil Poupaud), is someone she hooked up with years earlier as a cadet.

Inviting an air of mystery into this foreign, blue-collar world, where human characters are dwarfed by massive machinery and accidents can have fatal consequences, Borleteau constructs the film’s interpersonal dynamics more from body language than from explicitly spoken dialogue. Besides, both the boat and the ocean supply commotion enough, from the constant white-noise churn of waves below to the low, steady rumble of the engines, faithfully reproduced in the robust sound design, which completes the almost documentary illusion that this elegantly lensed widescreen pic was shot at sea.

The film itself was launched at the  Locarno Film Festival , which favors projects whose artistic sensibilities tend to flounder in the commercial marketplace. “Fidelio” happens to be more accessible than most, but could still prove challenging beyond its native France, where it was released to generally positive reviews the day before Christmas. In the absence of eloquent interpersonal interactions (complicated enough by the conflicting languages spoken by the ship’s crew), audiences must pay careful attention to subtle cues: Alice is outgoing and openly flirtatious with her colleagues, but icy at first toward Gael. In short order, however, that awkwardness melts to reveal a vulnerable woman still quite conflicted about the memory of the attraction they once shared — and rightfully wary of how it could threaten the good thing she has back home.

Like her male colleagues, she’s susceptible to loneliness when away from port for too long — more than that, for the film unabashedly acknowledges that her yearning is sexual. Watching “Fidelio,” it’s hard not to remark how seldom contemporary filmmakers allow women to be the proactive agents of desire. As a narrative creation, Alice doesn’t exist merely to excite male characters. We experience the movie through her eyes, juggling the temptations put before her, pining for the partner she left behind and dealing with the consequences of her actions, all running parallel to her unique professional activities. It’s a refreshing depiction set in a truly unique setting. While the demands of shooting aboard a ship were no doubt great, so, too, are its rewards.

Reviewed at Palm Springs Film Festival (New Voices/New Visions), Jan. 5, 2014. (Also in 2014 Locarno, Vienna film festivals.) Running time: 94 MIN. (Original title: “Fidelio, l'odyssee d'Alice”)

• Production: (France) A Pyramide Distribution (in France) release of an Apsara Films, Why Not Prods. presentation of a Why Not Prods., Apsara Films, Arte France Cinema production, with the participation of Arte France, Canal Plus, Centre National du Cinema, La Region Provence-Alpes Cote d'Azur. (International sales: Pyramide Intl., Paris.) Produced by Marine Arrighi De Casanova, Pascal Caucheteux.
• Crew: Directed by Lucie Borleteau. Screenplay, Borleteau, Clara Bourreau, with the collaboration of Mathilde Boisseleau. Camera (color, widescreen), Simon Beaufils; editor, Guy Lecorne; music, Thomas De Pourquery; production designer, Sidney Dubois; costume designer, Sophie Begon; sound, Marie-Clotilde Chery, Edouard Morin, Melissa Petitjean; assistant director, Benjamin Papin; casting, Clement Quentin, Borleteau.
• With: Ariane Labed, Melvil Poupaud, Anders Danielsen Lie, Pascal Tagnati, Jean-Louis Coulloc'h, Nathanael Maini, Bogdan Zamfir, Corneliu Dragomirescu, Manuel Ramirez, Thomas Scimeca. (French, English, Romanian, Tagalog, Norwegian dialogue)

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Fidelio: Alice's Journey

Ariane Labed ( Assassin's Creed ) stars as a nautical engineer who runs across an old flame in her new posting aboard a cargo ship in this romantic French drama. As the voyage goes on, her feelings for him are rekindled...

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Fidelio: Alice's Journey | Ratings & Reviews

Rotten tomatoes® rating, audience score rating.

"Easily the most fascinating film to come along and challenge traditional gender roles in the past year."

"Even before a snake infiltrates the ship, Borleteau's metaphors aren't subtle, but shes persuasive on the tensions between desire, devotion and duty, and Alice's yearnings rise to the surface with frank complexity."

"A remarkably assured first feature."

"The explosions are subtler than you might expect, and Lebed is superb in the role."

"The whole thing is contrived and just a little preposterous ..."

"Sending a woman around the world to find her anchor may be a nice concept to begin with, but the script of... Fidelio - Alice's Journey lacks the necessary structure to sustain it all through or lead it securely into safe harbour."

"Built four-square around Ariane Labed's engaging turn as eponymous sailor Alice, this feature debut from actress-turned-writer-director Lucie Borleteau strikes a delicate balance between the sensual and the matter-of-fact."

Fidelio: Alice's Journey | Details

Fidelio: Alice's Journey | Trailers

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Fidelio, Alice's Journey

• 4 out of 5 stars
• Recommended

Time Out says

A powerful first feature from a French filmmaker to watch, this is about a young woman toughing it out below decks on an ocean voyage

It’s unusual to see a 30-year-old woman as an engineer on a cargo ship, but Alice (Ariane Labed) is a tough pro, holding her own among the otherwise all-male crew in this slice-of-life French drama. Alice’s sweet Norwegian boyfriend is patiently waiting for her in Marseille, but when the captain of her latest posting turns out to be an old flame, staying true just got a lot more challenging. Lucie Borleteau’s remarkably assured first feature intrigues with its doc-style observation of the daily routines, sudden stresses and eccentric rituals of life on an ocean-going workhorse. Yet it never loses sight of the aching, sensual undertow prompting its protagonist’s sometimes impulsive behaviour. True, Borleteau might have stoked the flames a bit higher, but the languor of the storytelling draws us in, and Greek actress Labed is both convincing in French and a strong-yet-vulnerable presence capable of holding an entire movie together.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 2 October 2015
• Duration: 97 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Lucie Borleteau
• Screenwriter: Lucie Borleteau
• Ariane Labed
• Melvil Poupaud
• Anders Danielsen

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Fidelio: Alice's Journey

Cast & crew.

Ariane Labed

Alice Lesage

Melvil Poupaud

Gaël Lavesseur

Anders Danielsen Lie

Félix Bjørnsen

Pascal Tagnati

Jean-Louis Coullo'ch

• Average 6.6

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Fidelio: Alice's Journey review – sex on the sea, m'lad

Ariane Labed plays an comely engineer onboard a container ship, navigating men as she goes in a slightly preposterous love triangle

H ere’s a sexy film of enormous sexiness set in the sexy world of, erm, container ships. Ariane Labed plays Alice, an engineer on a freighter ironically named the Fidelio. She wears blue overalls and is sometimes fetchingly smudged with engine-y oil on her face. Alice has a boyfriend when ashore: a Norwegian graphic novel artist Felix (Anders Danielsen Lie). But onboard she’s having an affair with her captain and old flame Gaël (Melvil Poupaud) and also boinking a Romanian crew-member called Vali (Bogdan Zamfir). When not working or indeed shagging, Alice is reading the thoughtful diary of a engineer who died of a heart attack on board, a death that the captain is oddly covering up, pretending it was a man-overboard-type accident, for reasons never properly explained. The sheer physical beauty of Labed and Poupaud in these surroundings is odd, and the whole thing is contrived and just a little preposterous: it reminded me, not unpleasantly, of the BBC’s eccentric 1980s soap Triangle , about steamy goings-on aboard a North Sea passenger ferry which travelled between Amsterdam, Gothenburg and Felixstowe.

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FIDELIO, ALICE'S JOURNEY

Fidelio, l'odyssée d'alice.

Alice is a sailor. While her partner Félix waits for her on land, she sets off as second mechanic on the Fidelio, an old freighter. On board, she discovers not only that her predecessor has just died, but also that the skipper is none other than the first great love of her life.

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Thirty-year-old Alice is a sailor about to embark on a journey she will not soon forget. Leaving her fiancé Félix ashore, she joins the crew of an old cargo ship, the Fidelio, as a mechanic. Once on board, Alice discovers that she is replacing a man who has just died and that Gaël, the first great love of her life, is the ship's captain. Lulled by life aboard the ship and entranced by the limitless horizon of the wide open ocean, Alice succumbs to desire and begins an affair with Gaël. But she soon faces a difficult choice about what will make her truly happy: an unfettered life at sea, or grounded happiness at home?

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‘fidelio: alice’s journey’ (‘fidelio: l’odyssee d’alice’): locarno review.

Lucie Borleteau's globe-trotting romantic drama premiered at the Swiss festival, winning Best Actress for Ariane Labed

By Neil Young

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FIDELIO - H 2014

High passions on the high seas propel Fidelio: Alice’s Journey ( Fidelio: L’odyssee d’Alice ), one of the more accessibly mainstream world premieres at Locarno this year. Built four-square around Ariane Labed ‘s engaging turn as eponymous sailor Alice, this feature debut from actress-turned-writer-director Lucie Borleteau  strikes a delicate balance between the sensual and the matter-of-fact.

Labed’s Best Actress prize in Switzerland, to add to her similar gong for the much edgier  Attenberg in Venice four years ago, will boost both the Greece-born performer’s rising international status and box-office prospects for French production Fidelio at home and abroad. Juggling romantic, dramatic and melodramatic elements against an unusual nautical backdrop, Borleteau shows sufficient ambition to ensure a fair wind of critical support.

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Even her title hints at wide-ranging cultural depths, combining as it does Beethoven , Homer and Lewis Carroll . And there’s also a nod towards Antonioni  via the detail that the much-traveled freighter Fidelio was previously known as the Eclipse, back when Alice (Labed) first served aboard in her earliest days below decks. But Borleteau’s screenplay, co-written with Clara Bourreau , proves sufficiently watertight to proceed under its own creative steam and to withstand the tempests of some credibility-straining third-act developments.

Stated baldly, Fidelio  deals with fidelity: both in terms of individuals’ commitment to their partners, and also to their own ideals. Alice seems happily settled with her landlubbing nice guy, Norwegian boyfriend Felix ( Anders Danielsen Lie ), even though the nature of her job — she’s a ship’s mechanic — means they are often physically apart for months on end. And while the wonders of Skype provide a measure of consoling “face time,” it soon becomes apparent that Alice operates by the maritime maxim “what happens at sea stays at sea.”

Joining the crew of the Fidelio to replace the recently deceased Patrick, she’s startled to discover that the Captain is dishy old flame Gael ( Melvil Poupaud ). Romantic and professional complications duly ensue, an extra dimension of psychological intricacy added when Alice happens across Patrick’s diaries (read in voiceover by Luc Catania ), and contrasts his solitary private life with her own uninhibited explorations of sexuality. 

Feminist aspects of Fidelio are present if unstressed, Borleteau mostly avoiding the cliches of the woman-in-a-man’s-world subgenre to explore, in tandem with the ever-game Labed, the universe of her proudly independent, self-confident heroine (“I’ll never be a normal girl,” she assures the perplexedly conventional Gael). Frank in its depiction of bedroom shenanigans, but discreet in its coital cuts, the film presents a convincingly detailed panorama of work, rest and play in the artificial, enclosed environment of the merchant marine.

In this aspect it recalls another recent Francophone picture named after an oceangoing vessel, Frederick Pelletier ‘s underappreciated Quebecois production Diego Star (2013), although Borleteau and Bourreau are much less concerned with analyzing issues of exploitation and managerial dereliction.

The latter does pop up in the closing stages, competing for attention with a somewhat clunkily handled imperilment of Alice and Felix’s relationship. By this stage, however, Borleteau and her collaborators have done more than enough to retain audience interest and sympathy, cinematographer Simon Beaufils ‘ 2.35:1 widescreen compositions encompassing intimate cabin close-ups and two-shots along with suitably exhilarating vistas for fleet glimpses of distant foreign shores.

Production companies: Apsara, Why Not Cast:  Ariane Labed , Melville Poupaud, Anders Danielsen Lie, Nathanael Maini, Bogdan Zamfir, Jan Priva, Luc Catania Director: Lucie Borleteau Screenwriters: Lucie Borleteau, Clara Bourreau (collaborator: Mathilde Boisseleau) Producers: Marine Arrighi de Casanova, Pascal Caucheteux Cinematographer: Simon Beaufils Production designer: Sidney Dubois Costume designer: Sophie Begon Editor: Guy Lecorne Composer: Thomas de Pourquery Sales: Why Not, Paris

No Rating, 95 minutes

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Fidelio – Alice’s Journey

By Dan Fainaru 2014-08-10T07:49:00+01:00

Dir: Lucie Borleteau. France. 2014. 95mins

Sending a woman around the world to find her anchor may be a nice concept to begin with, but the script of Lucie Borleateau’s debut picture Fidelio – Alice’s Journey ( Fidelio – L’odyssee d’Alice ) lacks the necessary structure to sustain it all through or lead it securely into safe harbour, despite star Ariane Labed’s impressively uninhibited performance.

The most interesting aspect of Borleteau’s film remains Alice herself, perfectly served by Labed’s frank, uninhibited performance.

Her lusty heroine is a sailor - a woman in a profession generally identified with men, a second mechanic on a freighter - whose travels which take her away from her present boyfriend, are supposed to invite deeper reflections on such weighty matters as the meaning of life, love and sex. Ultimately, however, they do nothing of the kind and by the time the film is over, one is entitled to wonder to what extent she had been actually affected by her experiences.

Alice (Labed) says goodbye to her Norwegian companion Felix (Anders Danielsen Lie), who she claims to adore, and embarks on an old rickety ship named Fidelio, on which she had served before as a cadet. She has a one-month contract to replace a member of the crew who had been killed in an accident. As soon as she is on boat, she finds that the captain is Gael (Melville Poupaud), was once her lover, and that the dead man, whose cabin she inherited, had left behind a detailed diary which reveals the emptiness of an existence that should have been anything but boring, given the numerous and colorful, if brief, affairs he had.

A free-wheeling, liberated and intense character, excited by the words of the diary and by memories of her sexual attraction for Gael, Alice is soon back with him, rekindling a relationship that was not quite resolved in her mind but seems acceptable in the kind of temporary limbo they are offered by the boat at sea.

All this blends in effortlessly enough with the ship’s routines and with the atmosphere on board, coloured by Fidelio’s international crew, ranging from Romania to the Philippines, each one the members contributing a touch of his national culture, customs and religion to the general mood.

Most of the incidents taking place during Alice’s first, and subsequently second trip after she is promoted to first mechanic, including the sexual interludes, are predictable enough, whether it is engine trouble or man trouble (after all, a woman is a rarity in a ship’s crew), the problem being that the script hardly develops at all, paying exclusive attention to the protagonist only and very little to the sequence of events around her.

The rest of the characters seem to be just accidental tourists moving through her personal landscape, none really identified or explored in depth, with the possible exception of the dead man, Le Gall, a cautionary absence reminding Alice that unless she makes the right choices she may end up like him.  Even the ship, which in such circumstances usually takes on a personality of its own and becomes a kind of protective shell from the outer world, never gets to be more than a serviceable backdrop to be discarded once the tale is over.

The most interesting aspect of Borleteau’s film remains Alice herself, perfectly served by Labed’s frank, uninhibited performance. An attractive, young, assertive woman, completely at ease with her sexuality, looking for an emotional balance in her life that would satisfy both body and soul. For a change, she has not chosen to be a sailor to see the world, but rather to find her own self, a challenge that is much more difficult accomplish, if at all.

Production companies; Apsara Films, Why Not Productions

Contact: Marina Arrighi de Casanova [email protected] , Nicolas Livecchi, [email protected]

Screenplay: Lucie Bourleteau, Clara Bourreau

Cinematography: Simon Beaufils

Editor: Guy Lecorne

Production designer: Sidney Dubois

Music: Thomas de Pourquery

Main cast: Ariane Labed, Melville Poupaud, Anders Danielsen Lie, Pascal Tagnati, Corneliu Dragomirescu, Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, Bogdan Zamfir, Nathanael Maini, Manuel Ramirez

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Fidelio: Alice’s Journey | Palm Springs International Film Festival Review

Go Ask Alice: Borleteau’s Debut Examines Desire, Gender, and Maturity

Replacing an engineer that’s mysteriously died on the vessel Fidelio, sailor Alice (Ariane Labed) leaves behind her intense new relationship with Felix (Anders Danielson Lie). Once aboard, she discovers that Gael (Melville Poupaud) is the captain, a man she had a torrid affair with years before on the same vessel when he was an engineer and she was a cadet. Their attraction is evident and picks up where it left off years prior, which seems to excite Alice because she has man both at home and at sea. But her actions have consequences, as she soon discovers.

Labed, whose first film was 2010’s Attenberg , for which she won Best Actress in Venice, adds another award to her filmography as Alice, for which she won at Locarno last year. Borleteau avoids making any definitive feminist ideals with Alice entrenched in this otherwise homosocial space, instead crafting a narrative simply attenuated to the effervescence of its title character. We’ve seen plenty of films hinged on the shoulders of a lone woman finding her way, against all odds, in male dominated occupations, but Borleteau’s is a unique example, for this is exactly what gives Alice her source of power. Initially, an early unwanted transgression which displaces the ship’s chief would have us believe the film will revolve around gendered workplace politics, but this isn’t the case. Instead, it only serves to highlight the importance of context and how no matter of political correctness can sanitize our daily lives into easily drawn white and black categories.

Mostly, the film revolves around the fantasy (and subsequent bonding) that accompanies occupations such as the one depicted here. Alice’s predicament isn’t unique, after all, as another crew member relays his recent divorce, while Alice peruses the diary of the mysteriously dead engineer she had been hired to replace and finds herself reexamining her own actions and goals as she taps into the deceased man’s life. Small details succinctly give us a handle on Alice’s thought processes, revisiting an initial romantic flame on a vessel that used to be called Eclipse, now renamed Fidelio, as if these were actual chapters in her own bildungsroman. But Alice is immediately transported back to the feelings she originally felt for the engineer turned captain, a feeling evident in how she longingly moons over the tape she finds over a faulty pipe she had placed years before.

Poupaud, in his most significant role since Laurence Anyways , is a likeable distraction, and intimately lusty encounters are frequent yet tastefully depicted. But his violation of the understanding of “what happens at sea stays at sea” forces a reexamination of her landlocked romance with Lie’s third part of the triangle, here a likeable presence but hardly given the chance to shine as he does in two excellent films from Joachim Trier. But from Alice’s point of view, this is an intricate and impressive maturation of learning how to understand what’s meaningful and worthy of pursuit. An interesting American counterpoint would be the Vera Farmiga character in Up in the Air , hardly as fully realized and used as a ‘big twist,’ Borleteau’s wisdom asserts that actualization occurs when we’re allowed to examine or work through the desires that chain us to false ideas of our nostalgia tinged pasts rather than the abject repression of them. Which may explain why it has yet to receive US distribution.

Reviewed on January 3 at the 2015 Palm Springs International Film Festival. 97 Mins.

Los Angeles based Nicholas Bell is IONCINEMA.com's Chief Film Critic and covers film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Cannes and TIFF. He is part of the critic groups on Rotten Tomatoes, The Los Angeles Film Critics Association (LAFCA), the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and GALECA. His top 3 for 2021: France (Bruno Dumont), Passing (Rebecca Hall) and Nightmare Alley (Guillermo Del Toro). He was a jury member at the 2019 Cleveland International Film Festival.

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