Felicia's Journey (1999) Reviewed by Eugene Novikov http://www.ultimate-movie.com/ Member: Online Film Critics Society
Starring Bob Hoskins, Elaine Cassidy, Arsinée Khanjian. Rated PG-13.
There are many superficial similarities between Atom Egoyan's flawed but resonant new movie Felicia's Journey and his 1997 critical smash The Sweet Hereafter, but the two films are fundamentally different. Hereafter was a concept movie, dealing with the idea of grief after a tragedy. Felicia's Journey is nothing of the sort. It's a character movie, one that plunges into the deepest, darkest depths of human nature. The main character is a serial killer and yet the killings are never shown; the movie is not about them.
Young, naive, pregnant Felicia comes to Great Britain from Ireland in search of her lover, who has reportedly gone away to serve in the army. He promised Felicia he would write every day, but she has not heard a word from him since he left. The only information she has came from a friend of a friend, and that is that he works in a lawnmower factory. She wonders around England's industrial midlands in search of Wonderboy; she is instead taken in by Joseph Ambrose Hilditch (Bob Hoskins), who obligingly assists her in her search but has dark ulterior motives himself.
You see, Hilditch has murdered a number of young women. They were all lonely young things, undergoing major crises. He preyed on their emotions and when they tried to leave, he killed them. Hilditch himself doesn't know he did it: he remembers the girls, but not the crimes. He obsessively follows along with tapes of his classy mother's old cooking shows, where he, as a child was the co-star -- whenever his mother needed someone to humiliate.
Meanwhile, Hilditch takes steps to make sure Felicia stays by his side and she never suspects him for a moment. Felicia's Journey develops into a suspense thriller that uses drastically untraditional methods to generate that suspense: no quickening of the pace, no dramatic swells of the soundtrack to indicate something exciting happening. The result is, unfortunately, an effective drama but not much of a thriller. We're involved, emotionally and viserally, but never particularly, um, thrilled. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
One of Egoyan's more tangible fallacies here is the film's first 45 minutes. He limps out of the starting line with a deadly slow first third, to the point where I had almost given up on the movie by the time things got interesting. It's a well-known fact that non-mainstream directors like to take their time, but isn't grabbing the audience's attention immediately one of the first rules of filmmaking?
Fortunately, once things get interesting, they really get interesting. The performances quickly develop into rich, deep characterizations and the plot becomes intricate and involving. Egoyan is a craftsman, one of the most effectively subtle directors in the business. His films take on an eerie quality of a whole other level running beneath the main storyline. We get glimpses of it once in a while, through character revelations, script allusions, et al -- or we think we do -- but for the most part it remains hidden from us. Of course, it may not even exist, but in that case Egoyan's deliberate, mystical style is sure good at making us imagine it.
The ending of Felicia's Journey is a tour de force. At that point, everything becomes clear and you realize just how good everything that preceded it was. It creates the temptation to go back and watch the movie again (something I plan to do, since I have the video) to learn more about Joseph Ambrose Hilditch.
I do wish the character of Felicia was more of a person than a concept. She barely even has dialogue and, as a result, never fully becomes human. Thus, we can't identify with her and the film's protagonist becomes the serial killer himself, something that should turn off audiences. It also makes the title kinda strange -- this is hardly Felicia's journey. The movie ceases to be about her as soon as we see Hilditch's first cooking scene.
I'm not as enthusiastic about this movie as I was about The Sweet Hereafter because it's rougher around the edges. The film "wakes up" in its last 20 minutes, but there is no reason why the whole movie couldn't have been as rich and as complex as those final moments. But I won't complain too much. Go see this one.
Grade: B+
©1999 Eugene Novikov
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