- Format: Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
- Language English
- Subtitles: English
- Region: Region 1 (US and Canada DVD formats.)
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9 - 2.35:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Classification: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) (US MPAA rating. See details.)
- Studio: Lions Gate
- DVD Release Date: 20 Feb 2001
- Run Time: 111 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- ASIN: B00003CWQ0
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 156,183 in Film & TV (See Top 100 in Film & TV)
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Reviews
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
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bob Hoskins is outstanding in a fine, disturbing movie,
By C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Felicia's Journey [DVD] (DVD)
The Sweet Hereafter is such a first-rate movie that I wanted to take another look at this one, which Egoyan made two years later. It's not in the same league as Hereafter, but it is an excellent, disturbing movie.
Bob Hoskins plays Joseph Hilditch, who runs a big kitchen operation to feed the employees of a factory. At night he cooks elaborate dinners in his own gadget-filled kitchen while watching old video tapes of a cooking show. The star of the show had been his mother, an enveloping presence who completely dominated young Joey. Then he eats his meals alone, listening to Mantovani and other standbys of the Fifties. He also occasionally helps out young women when they are in distress. Felicia (Elaine Cassidy) has come to his city from Ireland to look for her lover, who left to find a better job and promised to write regularly. He never wrote and she found herself pregnant. They meet. He takes her in. Through flashbacks and circumstance we learn that Hilditch is a disturbed and violent individual. The movie sets all this up in an uneasy, quiet, almost sympathetic way, and then deals with how these two deal with each other. This isn't some sort of murder or horror story; Hoskins doesn't jump out of closets. It's about two damaged people in which more damage can happen. I liked it a lot.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
delicate masterpiece,
By kuffar harbi (switzerland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Felicia's Journey [DVD] [1999] (DVD)
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.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting, Believable Characters, Excellent Directing,
By
This review is from: Felicia's Journey [DVD] [1999] (DVD)
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
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