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Although I have quibbles with Trevor's version of contemporary Ireland (Felicia's father seems like an Irish rural type out of 1949 rather than 1994), he understands these fusty archetypes and knows what he wants from them. Egoyan is obviously ill at ease, and his attention keeps wandering to the comforting shimmer of the nearest cathode-ray tube or the nuclear-reactor towers that loom over Birmingham's motorway. We are virtually barraged with explanations for Hilditch's homicidal tendencies: His mother publicly humiliated him; he can't get a date; he receives messages from television (an old Hollywood version of Salomés dance) and signs in hospital waiting rooms ("BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD"). But as any horror fan can tell you, true evil never needs a justification.

"Felicia's Journey" builds tangible and sinister momentum the more it focuses on the finely wrought contrast between Hoskins, always a master of actorly economy, and the heartbreaking Cassidy, wholly convincing as a miserable girl almost unaware of her beauty. Hoskins plays Hilditch as a gentle psycho, a killer of taste and discretion. He sees almost immediately that Felicia is adrift in Birmingham, with little chance of ever finding her Johnny (who doesn't want to be found in any case). But he wants God, or Felicia's own despair, to bring her to him. He never tries to lure her into his car, for instance -- the second time they meet, he tells her he'd be happy to give her a lift, only he's just done his shopping and there's no room. Even after he has won her confidence, he repeatedly tempts fate, driving her to a factory where she thinks Johnny may work, or taking her to a pub where Irish immigrants hang out. "Drink some of that tea while it's warm, dear," he purrs with motherly concern in his North Country accent. "The goodness is in the warmth, they say."

Hilditch reels Felicia in like an expert angler does a trout, and he apparently wants her to give up, the way a trout will after a lengthy struggle. He lets her come and go, but quietly pockets her money so she won't go far. She stays briefly with a charismatic West Indian evangelist (Claire Benedict), who from then on hovers at the periphery of the story offering such cryptic pronouncements as "None of us can flee the one who dies, for the one who dies waits for us." Hilditch even invents a fictional wife and then kills her off, filling his house with funereal flowers and haphazard piles of women's underwear. Is this a strategy to wear down Felicia's resistance, or just the demented, symbolic act of an obsessive? In Hoskins' perfectly opaque performance, it becomes clear that Hilditch himself has no idea. At his greatest moment of truth, when Felicia's journey nears its culmination, all he can come up with is "I am lonely sometimes in my house. Often, I am lonely."

Although I want to avoid spoilers, readers of Trevor's novel should know that Egoyan has significantly altered its ending. Clearly a director with Egoyan's record of independence and integrity has earned the chance to go his own way, but I can't help seeing this as more evidence that he's uncertain about the theme and significance of "Felicia's Journey." Even a second-rate Egoyan, I should add, is superior to many other filmmakers' best efforts. There are fragments of a great movie inside "Felicia's Journey," but Egoyan's trademark hypnotic imagery, and moments of piercing transcendence, can't quite wriggle free of the clumsy literary adaptation that contains them. Such are the fruits of respectability.
salon.com | Nov. 19, 1999

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