Stars: Bob Hoskins, Arsinee Khanjian, Elaine Cassidy, Gerard McSorley, Peter McDonald

Director: Atom Egoyan

Summary: A middle-aged catering manager helps a young woman, who has just arrived from Ireland in order to locate her boyfriend, to find boarding accomodation. It soon becomes apparant that he has befriended and abused many young women before and now has his sights set on this woman...

Based on the best-selling novel by Irish author William Trevor, Egoyan's follow-up to his critically acclaimed THE SWEET HEREAFTER is technically impressive in the way it serves up its somber, ghoulish tale. The film is effortlessly smooth, indelibly rendered and yet simultaneously bone-chillingly creepy and oppressive--one can practically smell the decay lurking beneath the gleaming surfaces of Hilditch's immaculate kitchen. Egoyan once again proves he is a director who is completely in control of his material and vision, even if the story hasn't sprung singularly from his mind. He also remains one of the few artists who have the ability to craft a film that is slickly accomplished, emotionally grueling to watch, and entertaining at the same time.

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Like Hitchcock, Atom Egoyan envisions family life as a potential hotbed of literal or figurative violence and incest. In Felicia's Journey, Egoyan's adaptation of William Trevor's shattering novel, one dreads to imagine what TV-cook mom (Arsinée Khanjian) did to so damage her pudgy son that grown-up Hilditch (Bob Hoskins) still prepares meals in perfect unison with faded videotapes of her show--and, as we eventually discover, often takes more sinister trips down Memory Lane. Distant kin to Psycho's Tony Perkins, Hoskins's troll is so obsessive, so traumatised, his every short-armed, fat-handed gesture and sing-song utterance is precisely calculated to keep reality safely buried.

Egoyan's movies often seem located underwater, in some surreal dreamscape where one's breath is perpetually suspended while a slow horror seeps ever deeper under the skin. Helpless, transfixed, one watches as his characters drive inexorably toward mined intersections where lives and souls may be lost or redeemed. When Hilditch's path crosses, diverges from and finally coincides with that of young, pregnant Felicia (Elaine Cassidy)--an Irish innocent searching for her errant boyfriend--it leads to terrible epiphany for these fellow travellers. Trouble is, creepy Hilditch and too-naive Felicia come up a bit short in the psychological complexity department, so by film's end, revelatory payoffs are mostly penny ante. Felica's Journeytours familiar Egoyan territory--an industrialised wasteland full of hungry hearts--but this latest fairy tale (think perverse variations on Hansel and Gretel) isn't in the same league with such "family values" masterpieces as Exoticaor The Sweet Hereafter. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com

Aspect Ratio:	1.33 Full Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Interactive Menus, Scene Access, Commentary With Director Atom Egoyan
Year:	1999
Release Date:	July 24, 2000
Runtime:	111 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	D 092921
Keywords:	General, Journey, Thriller, Felicia's
Genre:	Thriller