Felicias Journey (1999)

"Two big thumbs up.  Roger Ebert & Joyce Kulhawik, Roger Ebert & The Movies
"The richest, most provocative serial killer movie in cinema history.  Kenneth M. Chanko, Newark Star-Ledger

Editor's Note 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.

	ArsinŽe Khanjian
	Bob Hoskins
	Peter McDonald
	Elaine Cassidy
	William Trevor - Based On Novel By
	Atom Egoyan - Director
	Paul Sarrosy - Director of Photography
	Mychael Danna - Musical Score
	Bruce Davey - Producer
	Atom Egoyan - Screenplay

Stumbling through the beautifully rendered industrial Midlands, England, in clunky platform shoes, hair fashioned in a childlike ponytail, the young Irish Felicia (Cassidy) plows along in search of the boyfriend who impregnated her and promised to write. Along the way she meets the kindly, middle-aged Joseph Hilditch who offers to help her find her love. However, all is not as it seems--the mild-mannered catering manager of a large factory is, in fact, unhinged. As the story unfolds we follow his attempts to befriend and earn the trust of the guileless Felicia--who, as a product of Irish old world superstition and family dysfunction (a world that Egoyan reveals in sparing yet memorably atmospheric glimpses) is utterly clueless as to his motives. Hilditch, played with a creepy undercurrent intensity by Hoskins, also manages to be truly sympathetic at the same time. A bachelor, he obsessively and ritualistically prepares torturously detailed meals for himself--instructed via videotapes of an old TV cooking program hosted by his late, overbearing French mother, who had forced her unattractive, socially graceless and unwilling young son to be her guinea pig. The legacy of his mother's effect on him is revealed in Hilditch's own precise, neurotic focus on cooking; and in a quiet sub-hobby--meeting and befriending young women who eventually disappear from his life. The film chronicles his latest "relationship" with the singular Felicia. Rolling Stone
"...A haunting film....[A] hypnotic blend of mirth and mayhem..." 11/25/1999 p.112

Sight and Sound
"...A film that, satisfyingly, gives more complex signals than we might at first suspect....FELICIA'S JOURNEY seems Hitchcockian from the start..." 10/??/1999 p.34-44

Entertainment Weekly
"...Egoyan pokes into his favorite pits of sexual darkness, spiritual hunger, and human disconnectedness..." -- Rating: B 12/03/1999 p.76

New York Times
"...Hard to forget....The film sustains a mood of heightened consciousness..." 11/12/1999 p.E14

Box Office
"...Aided by a uniformly superb cast, Egoyan triumphs in a pared-down film that makes chillingly expressive use of his signature themes....Surprising deftness and originality..." -- 4 out of 5 stars 07/01/1999 p.76

USA Today
"...Atom Egoyan capably finesses the personal, political and even the macabre in FELICIA's JOURNEY....It lingers in the mind for days..." 11/12/1999 p.13E

Chicago Sun-Times
"...Egoyan is such a devious director, achieving his effects at a level below the surface....It's as if his films inject material into our subconscious, and hours later, like a slow reaction in a laboratory retort, they heat up and bubble over..." 11/19/1999 p.34

Washington Post 8 of 10
Felicia's Journey is so elegantly layered and emotionally restrained, it makes the horror at its center all the more disturbing. In Canadian writer-director Atom Egoyan's hypnotic onion of a movie, each scene is a peeling away of innocence, not only for the Felicia (Elaine Cassidy) of the story, but for the audience. - Desson Howe