What kind of life would you like your child to have? Would you like him to go through some of the experiences you’ve had or would you prefer him not to repeat them? These are some of the questions that must be asked by many parents, including Sabadell filmmaker Fèlix Colomer ( Vitals, Shootball ), who in his new project that premieres today on HBO Max, Les vides del Fèlix , reconstructs different stages of the his life to reflect on which of these experiences would be worth it for his son Riu to live for himself.
The idea for the docuseries, shot in Catalan and Spanish, arose “after watching the HBO series How to with John Wilson, where a New Yorker goes with his camera around the city analyzing the world around him and in banal things to take them to a deeper ground”, says Colomer. “I wanted this independence of going around the world with my camera doing what I want and shooting in one place to end up in another without anything to see”. And this happens in Les vides del Fèlix, where, for example, “in the first chapter we start talking about chess and end up talking about knowing how to win and how to lose”.
The initial idea was to enter the worlds that Colomer has lived (“some very geeky”, he says) and remain as an outside observer. “But in the end I ended up opening up completely in a way that ended up being an absolute therapy where I ended up confessing complexes I had and talking to my family about taboo subjects.” All these reflections are directed towards his son Riu wondering if he would like him to repeat his experiences or not. “I wanted to show him who his father was and what his experiences have been without giving too many lessons. And in the end, in fact, he was the one who gave it to me”, he admits.
The chapters are very different in a docuseries that goes in crescendo. Themes of how to face a problem head on without resorting to lies, complexes, contradictions, success and failure or reconciliations are addressed in each episode based on the stages experienced by Colomer.
The most special chapter is the one dedicated to love, where he remembers the intense relationship with his partner and how his father got angry when he told him they were leaving because of the routine. A family wound that also ends up being resolved in the docuseries. “The end is a tribute to my father, who has recorded my whole life, just as I am doing with the River; we both end up coming to the conclusion that recording is an act of love”, he concludes.
