Felicia's Journey [1999] (REGION 1) (NTSC)

Average customer rating:

Raw liver reminded him of his mother

Once again a film has ruined a wonderful novel!

delicate masterpiece

Interesting, Believable Characters, Excellent Directing

Hair-raising Movie But Great Acting

Felicia's Journey [1999] (REGION 1) (NTSC)
Starring: Bob Hoskins , Arsinée Khanjian , Elaine Cassidy , Sheila Reid , and Nizwar Karanj
Director: Atom Egoyan
Manufacturer: Live/Artisan
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Felicia's Journey

ASIN: B00003CWQ0
Release Date: 2001-02-20

Amazon.co.uk Review

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 Journey tours 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 Exotica or The Sweet Hereafter. --Kathleen Murphy, Amazon.com

Customer Reviews:

Raw liver reminded him of his mother.......2008-02-24

I watched this film for the third time yesterday. Certainly worth buying a copy, for it's very subtle and quite comical in a black humour kind of way. In fact, I've only just realised what made the character, Mr Hilditch, played by Bob Hoskins, so full of hatred and a desire for revenge against women. It was the liver.

In one shot, when the boy Hilditch was being used as a prop by his cookery-show mother during a presentation to camera, he messed up while trying to squirt some stuffing into a prepared turkey, and to punish him, she feeds him a little slice of the raw liver from the stuffing, forcing it into his mouth. Another scene shows the boy in the garden outside as his mother just finishes off a take. The mother rushes up to the lad and makes as if to kiss him on the mouth - but then moves her lips up to give him a peck on the forehead instead. This implied "sexual" kiss, plus the liver episode (a metaphor for her tongue, perhaps), plus much nose-rubbing Eskimo-style between mother and son, and the way Hilditch now a grown man who never married still has flashbacks while eating that make him choke and throw up, suggests that all this deviant behaviour is the result of severe, long-term abuse in childhood.

Elaine Cassidy as the Irish girl over in England to search for her boyfriend to tell him she's pregnant with his child delivers a tremendous performance, and it is excruciating to be one step ahead of her in the story as Hilditch wheedles her to do this and that, eventually persuading her to have an abortion.

The one thing that wasn't explained was what happened to all the other bodies? Since Hilditch is a catering manager and fascinated by food, I reckon he may have disposed of the softer parts in many, many meat pies and sausage rolls. There is a shot of him trying out a new "double" sausage roll that one of the canteen ladies has prepared for him, and he rushes into his office, barely able to spit out the food before gagging on it. So what's wrong with a sausage roll, one might ask? Well, it depends on what previous sausage rolls may have contained!

Once again a film has ruined a wonderful novel!.......2007-01-05

As an A level English Literature student, I found the film of 'Felicia's Journey' insulting to the novel by William Trevor.

Mr. Hilditch is NOT a psychopath or an abuser of young women, he is simply a sad lonely middle-aged man who never really fitted in with society, he sees these young women as similar to himself and wants to help, he becomes attached to them and feels rejected every time one of them leaves him.

Mr. Hilditch doesn't keep film of the girls he has befriended in the past, he doesn't even own a TV, and the film reads far too much into his relationship with his mother, whom he barely mentions in the novel. But for me the icing on the cake was the ending, poorly written and funnily enough not in keeping with the novel.

However the parts of the film that were set in Ireland, are I believe a good representation of not only of the social, political and religious climate of rural Ireland, but they also a good representation of the novel.

If you like strange and creepy films I think this one might be for you, but if you like an intriguing story with interesting characters and an unconventional ending then I suggest that you get a copy of the novel instead; and you wont be disappointed!

delicate masterpiece.......2005-06-25

This is a significant work of art. The final scene of the film is particularly crucial
Like all great movies, the ending is of paramount importance and carries the essential and residing meaning of the film. The final minutes lead beyond the film into the future, from darkness to light. In this case, Egoyan achieves a perfect mix of image,words and music to express this goodness,hope and strength.
Felicia helping create a thing of beauty( a public garden), connecting with a child(the father of the man), assisting a fellow human with directions and voicing over a compassion for Hilditch,his victims and the rest of us. Add the sublime music of Mychael Danna and we're talking about one of the great endings in the history of cinema, alongside those of Mizoguchi,Antonioni,Tarkovsky and other masters of closure.
And let's not forget the exquisite performance by Elaine Cassidy,full of depth and humanity.What a luminous presence,perfectly cast, embodying the tenderness and resilience of a character who succeeds in moving on and transcending the pain.
One of the great classics of the cinema of the heart.

Interesting, Believable Characters, Excellent Directing.......2003-07-24

This film is, I must admit, my introduction to Egoyan's works. He is a director who comes highly recommended by a friend whose taste in films I admire.

There is, indeed, much to admire about Felicia's Journey. The cinematography is excellent, with many memorable frames. One that particularly sticks in my mind is a shot of a nuclear power plant, brilliantly photographed, that captures the emptiness of the landscape, as well as being a harbinger and symbol of the roiling emotions that lay beneath the surface of the main character's (Hilditch's)calm exterior. There are many such nuances in the film. Egoyan is clearly a director with a sure hand.

We know from the outset of the film that there is something not quite right about Hilditch (Bob Hoskins). What makes the character interesting and keeps us in suspense for a time, is that the character can go either way. Early on, it looks as if he may just be a mild mannered eccentric who has a compulsion about the proper preperation of food. We see him comically standing at the prep table in his elaborate home kitchen, carefully mimicing the step by step instructions of a rather ditzy French Lady Chef on a small screen TV.

The same is true of Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), who arrives at the customs desk in England, having come over by ferry from N Ireland. She is the ultimate rube, not even realizing that Northern Ireland is part of the UK, when the customs officer explains that that is why she doesn't need a passport. We are set up to expect very little out of naive, lost-girl Felicia.

The first indicator that something is not right with Hilditch is conveyed very subtly. Directly after the characters first meet and Hilditch has directed Felicia to a factory where she might possibly locate her boyfriend (the object of her visit), the camera shows Hilditch stopping his car and checking Felicia out in his rear view mirror for a fleeting moment. We know from that moment that there are ominous things on the horizon. We just don't know how onminous or how severe. As the plot and the characters develop, we gradually come to learn the sordid truth.

Excellent preformances from the leads and several supporting characters (particularly from Egoyan's wife, Arsinée Khanjian). The Lost Girl scenes (as viewed from a secret video camera planted on the dashboard of Hilditch's car) were fairly effective in the final edit. Yet the extended scenes in the DVD extras showed just how painfully amateurish these young actresses actually were. First year drama class material. The East Indies Bible lady was also playing to stereotype and her expressions consisted more of mugging than acting.

In the final analysis, the film was satisfying enough to make me want to seek out more Egoyan films. I think The Sweet Hereafter will be next on my list.

BEK

Hair-raising Movie But Great Acting.......2001-11-03

This movie is definitely not a feel good movie. As with the other movies by the same director, Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, this movie causes great distress. To me watching it feels like somebody's trying to strangle you. Can we still call this entertainment or are we watching art? That said, the acting is great. I guess the price is about right as you probably may not want to view this movie more than once.

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