Here's the second of my reviews this week of films by director Atom Egoyan. This film was the follow-up to The Sweet Hereafter (1997).

Historical Background: The career of Atom Egoyan as a filmmaker really began to come together with Exotica, made in 1994. Until then, his films had exhibited more promise than delivery, although Next of Kin (1984) earned Egoyan nomination for a Genie for Best Director and Speaking Parts (1989) had been screened at the Cannes Film Festival. Exotica (1994) made a big impression at Cannes, winning the International Critics' Prize. As always happens after a young director's first major success, critics and fans waited with baited breath to discover whether Exotica had been a fluke or whether it signaled a coming-of-age and a transition from mere promise to incipient auteur status. Folks didn't have to wait long for an answer.

Egoyan's next film, The Sweet Hereafter (1997), took the Special Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and earned its director the Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay awards. With two international successes now behind him, Egoyan turned next to Felicia's Journey (1999). This would be his first film with a setting outside the confines of rural Canada and it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999. It's an intelligent probing film, something of a psychological study disguised as a thriller. Once again, Egoyan showcased his sophisticated elliptical style of narrative progression. He also drew on pretty much the same team of collaborators with whom he had worked repeatedly, cinematographer Paul Sarossy and composer Mychael Danna.

The Story: Felicia's Journey is mainly a two character film, a middle-aged man, named Hilditch (Bob Hoskins), and the eponymous adolescent, Felicia (Elaine Cassidy). The story is told in Egoyan's classic elliptical manner, with flashbacks and dream sequences seamlessly interwoven with present time action. The threads for the two main characters, initially separate, soon converge and become integrated into the principal storyline.

Felicia is a young and attractive Irish innocent from County Cork, Ireland. There, she had fallen in love with young Johnny (Peter McDonald), thinking it would be for life. Even when Johnny departs for England, she believes explicitly in his promises to write her every day and send his address. Johnny, unknowingly, has left her with child. He has forgotten to leave her his heart. Johnny's mother, Mrs. Lysaght (Brid Brennan), refuses to give Felicia Johnny's address and burns the letters from Felicia to Johnny that she had promised to send him. When Felicia's father (Gerard McSorley), an embittered Irish nationalist, learns that she is pregnant with Johnny's child, he is outraged, not so much by her lack of chastity as by his suspicion that Johnny has gone off to join the British army (the worst kind of betrayal of Irish values, for the recalcitrant Irish nationalists). "You are carrying the enemy within you," he tells Felicia, along with uncharitably declaring her a "whore." Felicia only has her father and great-grandmother, and the latter is almost a century old. Wanting desperately to inform Johnny that she's pregnant, Felicia borrows most of her great-grandmother's savings to cross the Irish Sea in pursuit of her child's father. Johnny had told her that he was going there to work in a lawnmower factory, rather than owning up to his real intention of signing up with the British army. Felicia's rather impulsive plan is to search all the lawnmower factories in the vicinity of Birmingham, England, which was Johnny's destination.

The short and stout Hilditch, meanwhile, works as a manager for a gourmet catering outfit in Birmingham. It's a job for which he is uniquely suited, having grown up as the son of a sophisticated French mother, Gala (Arsinée Khanjian), a famous television personality as hostess of a cooking show in the fifties (a la Julia Child). At work, Hilditch's highly developed culinary taste makes him the chief taster and the moods of the entire staff rise and fall in relation to his verdicts. The man enjoys the rare combination of being held in awe and also beloved. At home, Hilditch's life is a good deal less sublime. He lives alone in the same large, clapboard mansion in which his mother raised him. Though his mother is gone, her presence in the house is palpable. Her large portrait dominates the living room. In the early evening, Hilditch prepares elaborate gourmet dinners-for-one while listening incessantly to tapes of his mother's old shows, sometimes through opera glasses from the next room, or slipping on old sentimental ballads from the fifties, such as "My Special Angel" or "The Face and the Heart of an Angel." Sometimes Hilditch himself appears on his mother's show, as a chubby, shy and awkward child. She gives him simple assignments to help with the food preparation, but he invariably messes up. Other times she forces a morsel of the day's confection into his mouth, which he invariably chokes on or spits out. Whatever his failings, the irrepressibly ebullient Gala simply squeezes his ears or checks and kisses him approvingly.

When Felicia arrives in Birmingham, she begins traipsing hither and thither, looking for a lawnmower factory where Johnny might be at work. She asks various passersby if they know of such a factory, but none of them are able to help. Hilditch, who is leaving work for the day, spots a lost-looking Felicia and offers her directions to a likely place. Johnny doesn't work there, however, much to Felicia's disappointment. Hilditch encounters Felicia again, and seeing her distress, suggests another possibility, one that is about fifty miles out of town. He tells her that he's going there to visit his wife, Aida, in the hospital anyway. At about this time, viewers see periodic snippets of video recordings (or, possibly, flashbacks) of other young women or girls with whom Hilditch has played the Good Samaritan in the past, each seated in the passenger seat of his green Morris Mini-Minor, each expressing immense gratitude for his fatherly solicitude. We begin to wonder about this man's motivations.

The factory in the countryside proves another bust for Felicia's search. While Felicia and the factory sentries are checking the factory's roster for Johnny's name, Hilditch rifles through her knapsack, finds the cash nest egg Felicia had borrowed from her great-grandmother, and pockets it. Clearly, this is not a man in need of petty cash, so we imagine an even more sinister motive. When Felicia rejoins him in the car, Hilditch stops by the hospital where his supposed wife is in treatment, but merely kills some time inside the hospital while Felicia waits in the car, in the parking lot. After a while, Hilditch emerges, telling Felicia a cock-and-bull yarn about his wife taking a turn for the worse. Now they are comrades in distress and mutually sympathetic.

When they return to Birmingham, Hilditch suggests that Felicia come into his home. He tells her that he'll arrange for one of his secretaries to make inquiries about Johnny's whereabouts. Felicia refuses, however, saying, "I can't be a nuisance at a time like this" (referring to the deteriorating condition of Hilditch's wife), and runs off. Perhaps, either instincts or her Catholic upbringing have saved her. On the streets, Felicia meets Miss Calligary, a Bible-thumping evangelist from Haiti. At least she'll have a place to stay – at the Barton Arms. Soon, however, Felicia discovers that her stash is missing. She'll have no way even to buy a ticket for the return trip to Ireland on the ferryboat. When Felicia reports the theft to Miss Calligary, the woman takes offense and throws Felicia out onto the street. It's a wet night with a steady downpour and the comely Felicia has to fend off one offer after another from men who have her pegged as a young prostitute. Finally, in desperation, Felicia knocks on the door of Hilditch's large home, begging for shelter.

Well, by now viewers recognize that the naïve and precious Felicia has walked into a den of Satan. Hilditch had located Johnny, in one of the military barracks in the city, but never reveals that information to Felicia. Instead, he arranges an abortion for the poor girl, to which she reluctantly agrees. That evening, after the abortion, he drugs Felicia with the very sleeping pills that had been prescribed for her by the clinic. The rest of the story you'll have to discover for yourself, but it remains true to the psychological undercurrent of the film rather than turning toward conventional thriller or slasher film territory.

Themes: What Egoyan is most interested in, as a film artist, is how our respective childhoods impact us for the rest of our lives. There's a marvelous irony in the diametrical contrast between the film's theme song (heard at the beginning and, again, near the end) and Egoyan's view of human nature. The key lyrics of the song go something like this: "What a wonderful world it would be if we only shared with each other the face and the heart of a child." That's a beautiful sentiment, on the surface, but Egoyan's version of the lyric might be stated: "What a wonderful world it would be if we didn't have to share with each other the residue of the abuses and suffering we've all experienced as children." There may be some children who are naturally tender and caring, but the face and heart of a child are more often than not less sweet than vicious. Think Lord of the Flies! Or, possibly you've seen a couple of toddlers fighting over a rattle or toy, flailing away at one another. Those examples don't even rely upon the children having been scarred by abuse or a dysfunctional family.

Hilditch and Felicia share something in common. Both had troubled childhoods lorded over by a single parent. Felicia's experience is more recent. Her father has cast her out because he's more concerned with politics than her emotional health or physical condition. What about Hilditch's up-bringing? Most reviewers seem to miss the point of the flashbacks to his childhood. One says that he was smothered in love. Not quite. It's true that Hilditch's "special angel" was his mother. Certainly, he idolized her. She was beautiful, a celebrity, and full of energy and personality. That's quite a mother for a chubby, shy little boy! Every boy should be so lucky! Well, not really! Gala is a classic example of a narcissist, totally absorbed in her own glamorous life. It's not that she abused Hilditch in any definable way. He was one of her accoutrements, like a fur wrap or a poodle. She had little time for him, however, and none of their interaction was based on his life, thoughts, or feelings. He was like a tiny asteroid orbiting around a supernova. "Mothers can be difficult," he says to Felicia. "I am lonely sometimes in this house. Often I am lonely." He was always lonely. Hilditch apparently grew up without a father and resents it. Perhaps if he had had two parents, he imagines, instead of one very preoccupied one, he might have gotten the love and attention that he desperately needed. "A child needs to be surrounded by loving care," he says. This is why he encourages Felicia to get an abortion and wait until both she and Johnny are ready to care for a child. All of the girls that Hilditch "helped out" (Beth, Jackie, Elsie, Sharon, Gay, Samantha, Bobbie) spoke of either unwanted pregnancies or promiscuity or both. The motivation behind Hilditch's psychopathic "work," therefore, is trying to prevent the birth of unwanted children, as he had been, to single mothers too busy or too self-absorbed to care for their offspring. He's crazy, but he believes in the "charity" of what he is doing, calling it a "blessed release." The reviewer who claimed that this film is about "pedophilia" missed the movie's point entirely. There's not one hint of sexual interest displayed by Hilditch. His only interest is in eliminating unwanted-baby machines.

One reviewer wonders why Mrs. Lysaght does not want Felicia getting in touch with her son. One reason is that she doesn't want the neighbors, and Felicia's father in particular, learning that her son has a military address. Johnny enlisted in the British army, which would be considered a betrayal by many of the patriotic Irish folk. Johnny went out of his way to lie about his plans, so obviously he realized the value of secrecy. Furthermore, if Mrs. Lysaght senses that Felicia's desperation is an indication of pregnancy, she may not want her young son saddled with a wife and child at so early a stage in his life.

Hilditch took the trouble to locate Johnny for himself in order to assure himself that the boy was a liar and a cad who had no honest intentions in relation to Felicia. Hilditch's entire psychotic motivation was to eliminate young women who were headed toward single-parenthood. He had decided, based on his own personal experience, that a kid growing up with only a mother suffers terribly. Hilditch went to the barracks where Johnny was stationed and overheard his tennis partner calling him by name. Later, seeing Johnny in the bar where he had taken Felicia, Hilditch carefully kept her attention riveted on himself, using probing questions, so that she would not spot Johnny.

Once Felicia agreed to have an abortion, Hilditch became ambivalent about whether to murder her, in the manner of the others, or not. He had already "blessedly released" Felicia's potential child from the horror of growing up fatherless, but Felicia was still a naïve idealist as likely to get herself impregnated again, out of wedlock, as not. He gave her the sleeping pills and dug the grave with the anticipation of murdering her. Three factors conspired to change his mind: (1) a run-in with the evangelists, spouting conventional religious theories of redemption, salvation, and healing; (2) some sense that Felicia was "different" (i.e., "purer") than the others; and (3) a reminder that he had betrayed his mother, even as she had betrayed him, when he digs up a wallet belonging to her that he had buried years ago, after stealing the cash.

Production Values: Felicia's Journey was based on a novel by William Trevor (his real full name is William Trevor Cox). Trevor was born May 24, 1928, in Cork County, Ireland, an Irish Protestant and son of a bank manager. He has spent much of his professional life in England as a novelist, television dramatist, playwright, and author of short stories. He remained in Ireland long enough to graduate from Trinity College in Dublin and to teach in Northern Ireland for a couple of years, but the poor economy of the country drove him to England, where he soon married and has lived ever since.

The plot for this film is bumpy and obscure, at times, as evidenced by the fact that quite a few reviewers fail to grasp one or more of the developments. All of it is there, but it is not always laid out in simple terms for viewers. Viewers who approach this film primarily as a thriller may find these plot difficulties frustrating. Like another film that I reviewed recently, Dead Calm, the plot here is secondary to the psychological study of the characters. Egoyan is illustrating how we are irrevocably shaped by our childhood experiences and especially the traumas or inadequacies of our upbringings. He then forms an ironic contrast between that idea and the song lyric about the face and heart of a child. What's important about this film is not the story per se, but what lies beneath the surface.

Egoyan employs his standard approach to narrative, which entails gracefully interweaving past and present, along with fantasy or dream segments. Egoyan is especially deft at smoothing the temporal shifts with transitions that associate one segment with the next. For example, after Felicia visits Johnny's mother, we see her turn wistfully to the photographs spread across the fireplace mantle. Then, suddenly, we're looking at a photograph display in Hilditch's home (he's standing beside his mother in every one). Egoyan lets the tension develop slowly and naturally, without fabrications to artificially pump up emotion. For much of the film, viewers are no more privy to Hilditch's true nature than is Felicia. We don't fully understand her danger until she begins to grasp it, so our tension parallels her own.

Cinematographer Paul Sarossy provides magnificent, painterly visuals for this film, exploiting the highly detailed mise-en-scene, especially evident in Hilditch's graciously furnished old home. There are numerous switches in film stock, such as when Egoyan inserts video recordings of previous victims. Sarossy also provides a masterfully surreal segment corresponding to a dream experienced by Felicia. The music provided by composer Mychael Danna is discordant, but not jarring, and complements the tension rather than trying to create it.

The two lead performances both deserved Oscar nominations and might have got them were this not a film by an independent, Canadian director. Bob Hoskins will be a familiar face to many movie lovers, for his work in such films as The Long Good Friday (1980), The Cotton Club (1984), Brazil (1985), Mona Lisa (1986), Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), Hook (1991), Nixon (1995), Michael (1996), Last Orders (2001), and Maid in Manhattan (2002). He is exactly the kind of actor that Egoyan likes to feature, with his slow, flat, delivery of lines and broad range of mannerisms and gestures. Hoskins gives a very intense performance.

Elaine Cassidy was a relative newcomer. She later appeared in The Others (2001). She's a radiantly beautiful young Irish actress with those perfect Irish eyes. For a young actress, she exhibited a remarkable range and subtlety in this film, stretching from innocence to headiness and vulnerability to emotional resilience. Among the supporting performers, Egoyan's wife, Arsinée Khanjian, was brilliant as Hilditch's mother, the irrepressibly bubbly Gala.

Bottom-Line: The Artisan DVD provides a widescreen format, enhanced for 16:9 televisions. The soundtrack is in Dolby digital 5.1. Theatrical trailers (U.S. and Canadian) are included along with TV spots, cast and crew bios and interviews, and a short featurette. The running time for the film itself is 116 minutes. This film is an excellent psychological thriller with depth and subtlety, almost worth five-stars, but with just enough plot difficulties to diminish its rating to about 4.3, which I'm obliged to round to four-stars. There's a bit of an Alfred Hitchcock feel to it, even to the point of actor Bob Hoskins stopping to look directly into the camera, for a moment, looking just a tad like the old master.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Canada:

The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz
The Barbarian Invasions
Boys of St. Vincent
The Decline of the American Empire
Exotica
The Fast Runner
The Hanging Garden
The Sweet Hereafter


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age