# Felicia's Journey (1999)

### reviewed by
Mark O'Hara

    Felicia's Journey (1999)

    A Film Review by Mark O'Hara

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In FELICIA'S JOURNEY, Canadian director Atom Egoyan has created a quiet and horrifying masterpiece. Lead actor Bob Hoskins has said about his experience shooting the picture, "There are some terrible moments in the film, but I had to play them." Hoskins also described his character, Hilditch the catering manager, as "a mixture of Jack the Ripper and Winnie the Pooh."

Felicia is a young Irish woman who has left her condemning father and set off to England to find the boyfriend who has abandoned her. In her quest to find Johnny, Felicia begins to scour factories where she believes he might be working. Though she is unsuccessful, she finds encouragement in the kind Mr. Hilditch, a quiet and proper man who keeps happening across her in various places.

Viewers catch a hint of a dark side in Hilditch when in a conversation to Felicia, he mentions his wife. Because we have already seen the single man in his empty house, we sense his agenda is twisted. When Egoyan introduces pieces of videotape that Hilditch has made of various girls riding in his car, we begin to trace an unspeakably evil pattern. This man creates scenarios that lure "lost girls" into his life; when they gain some relief from his kindness and begin to depart, Hilditch drugs and murders them.

So we know relatively early that things are amiss within Hilditch's motives. What's fascinating is the way the film studies this repulsive character, bringing out extreme frailty and loneliness within such a maniac. And just as the filmmaker has attended to numerous details in the script and set decoration and character history, Hoskins carries off a masterful depiction of humanity forsaken.

Bob Hoskins is the only actor I can picture playing Hilditch. For this character Hoskins has created a monster who manages to compose himself enough to get through one lonely day after another. Hilditch seems compulsive in everything: hair neatly combed, tie and vest always in their proper place, the man seems the quintessential British gentleman; he even uses the stereotype of endurance as part of his terrible ruse. Talking about his fictional late wife, he tells Felicia he must go on, chin up in the face of hardship. In all the mannerisms he lends to the character, Hoskins is brilliant. Particularly interesting are the moments in which we can see triggers being set off within Hilditch's psyche. In one scene in the hospital where he has told Felicia his wife is dying, Hilditch glimpses an old movie on a television in a waiting room. Suddenly we see Hilditch as a boy, sitting beside his mother in a movie palace. The film shows John the Baptist's head on a platter, the horrible queen examining it. In the balcony Hilditch's mother hands him her opera glasses so that he might see the horrid spectacle more closely. Though he is appalled, the boy watches, fascinated. What a telling scene! An attractive seductress who is cold at heart but who can be immensely charming - this was the woman who inflicted quite a bit of damage on her son. Watch the snatch of old movie, Hilditch freezes in revolting reverie. Although Hilditch's history is a document of premeditated evil, some of his emotions are easier to understand because of the care taken by William Trevor and Atom Egoyan in sketching in Hilditch's backstory.

Elaine Cassidy, a relative newcomer to film, plays Felicia with great understatement. It's almost a tone of passivity caused by innocence and politeness that she creates - a tone that causes her plight in the story to be more frightening. Cassidy works well with Hoskins, both actors knowing when to pause to underscore ideas with just the right intensity. Watching these two work, one never feels an insult to the intelligence.

In the grainy flashbacks - scenes from the cooking show as well as more private shots of little Joey Hilditch discovering a wallet and stealing money - we see a few of the causes of Hilditch's psychosis. The mother, Gala, is played by Egoyan's wife, actress Arsinee Khanjian. Lovely but exploitative, Gala appears to use her boy as an adorable on-camera sidekick. In a memorable scene, she places a chunk of liver in Joey's mouth, and the boy gags; watching a tape of this embarrassment, the adult Hilditch again gags; his sense of history nags that strongly at him. In all of her scenes, Khanjian is the perfect, subtle siren.

In a memorable supporting role, Claire Benedict plays Miss Calligary, a fervent door-to-door evangelist. Her presence adds just a bit of humor to the narrative, as she spouts her flowery Biblical rhetoric. Near the closing of the film her aggression of the spirit causes a sort of epiphany in Hilditch. It's a dark comic moment that could have been written by Flannery O'Connor, the most perverted recesses of the human heart tugged suddenly into the open.

Irish novelist William Trevor penned the book that was adapted by Egoyan. What's original about his adaptation is that Egoyan manages to avoid clichés about serial killers. The camera sweeps leisurely about the grand house that Hilditch grew up in; we glance mementos from the lives of Hilditch and his mother. One room is dedicated to her image; it's a repository of souvenirs from her television cooking show, photographs of herself, even relics like an old blender that Hilditch resurrects when his blender malfunctions. Attention to detail sets the story going in a very well-developed direction.

FELICIA'S JOURNEY is rated PG-13 for dark subject matter, though there are no real scenes of violence, and no profanity. Because of its unsettling nature, I would not recommend it for children under 12. Its pace is necessarily slow at times, filling out various dimensions of Hilditch's character or Felicia's background. Unfortunately, its status as an art film will not gain it wide release; but it is worth a trip to a nearby city art house. The bottom line: it is a superior character study that will engage you for every minute of its run, but it is a disturbing film you may not go out of your way to watch a second time.

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