The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Like the director’s previous feature, Jo for Jonathan, this is a minutely observed story of great modesty that thrives on transformations so tiny, the film deserves to be seen on the big screen.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Canada · 2015
Rated R · 1h 45m
Director Maxime Giroux
Starring Martin Dubreuil, Hadas Yaron, Luzer Twersky, Anne-Élisabeth Bossé
Genre Drama, Family, Romance
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Meira, a young woman from an orthodox Jewish community, forms an unlikely relationship with Felix, a secular young man mourning the death of his father. Despite their differences, their mutual attraction leads them both to consider a different way of life.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
Like the director’s previous feature, Jo for Jonathan, this is a minutely observed story of great modesty that thrives on transformations so tiny, the film deserves to be seen on the big screen.
A somber romance that’s as much about the cultural confluence of city life as it is about the unlikely couple who manage to find each other in it, Maxime Giroux’s Félix and Meira captures the dislocating loneliness of "Lost in Translation" without leaving its characters’ native Montreal.
Felix and Meira can only speak in vagaries about their feelings. At times they come across like underwritten archetypes, but the superficial aspects of their scenario are elevated by a pair of deeply empathetic performances. Giroux excels at implying his characters' internal processes.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Tiny advances in seduction — like a direct gaze, or the eventual removal of that wig — assume the power of full-on sexual collisions, and Ms. Yaron, with her restlessly darting eyes, easily conveys Meira’s sensual deprivation.
Slant Magazine by Kenji Fujishima
Maxime Giroux's sharp filmmaking instincts aren't always supported by similarly acute dramatic instincts.
Tender, heartfelt and exquisitely dull, the drama Félix and Meira illustrates the perils of trying to tell an emotional love story with meaningful stares and long pauses.
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
Félix & Meira eventually proves to have more in common with "Fill The Void," and with Burshtein’s effort to depict Orthodox Judaism as more than just a women’s prison, than it had appeared.
Though set in present-day Montreal, this tender romance unfolds like an episode from another century, paying the sort of careful attention to social boundaries you’d expect to find in a classic forbidden-love novel.
Photographed in muted interiors and under perpetually cloudy skies, Félix And Meira has the somber tone of a romance couched in painful sacrifice, but there’s also sweetness and joy in Meira slowly emerging from her shell.
Village Voice by Serena Donadoni
The restrained performances of Dubreuil and Yaron (Fill the Void) gradually reveal the flaws and strengths of this fragile couple, while Twersky is quietly devastating as an abandoned husband who fully understands devotion and sacrifice.
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