Felix, a six year old boy,is terminally -ill ;his dream is to meet an extra-terrestrial ,an ET;Nicolas ,his father will go out of his way to make his dream come true :he finds a flying saucer in a fairground and puts it in the yard ; as no ET is at hand,he will play the part himself : he dresses up as a space traveler ,he becomes "Gawin " ;neither the doctors nor the mother approve of this mad plan;Felix marvels at his new friend and Nicolas decides to carry on with this impossible foolish dream;.He sedates his child ,put the saucer on his van and takes it to Chamonix valley,in the Alps not far away from the "Mer De Glace " (=glacier);when he wakes up,Felix does believe Gawin flew him to his world , on a faraway planet ;but the illness is still spreading...
On the French scene of the early nineties, "Gawin "was some kind of UFO ;closer to fairytale than sci-fi , this one of the rare attempts at a cinema aimed at the children 's market which does not sink into soppiness or facile effects ;it owes a lot to Jean-Hugues Anglade ,masterfully portraying the desperate daddy and the character he has created from start to finish ;it's quite possible ,that unconsciously ,in his mind, Felix confuses the two persons.People will say Arnaud Selignac takes naivete to new limits ,that emotion is too restrained ,but his movie is nothing but derivative.
