fludd.org - Movie Review

In Canada, if you live in the province of Quebec, you can be sure about one thing: the people in the Quebecker media or newspapers, who are doing their job in French, are going to do their best not to talk too much about the English Canadian movies, even though some of them are worthy of consideration. Even being part of the official selection of a very prestigious international film festival is not a good guarantee for an English Canadian movie to get media visibility in the province of Quebec. Despite the fact that you don’t see the label “official selection” from an international film festival on Felicia’s Journey cover, you can be sure that this thriller has all the necessary ingredients to make a good movie, although it could have been more interesting.

When you read the résumé of the story at the back of the movie’s cover, you can see that Felicia’s Journey is presented as a thriller. Despite not being a thriller that is enormously exciting on the edges, the movie does know how to find its way to the end quite smartly, although anybody can easily notice that at the beginning, it suffers a little bit from a slow pace. In the middle, Felicia’s Journey’s pace start to be quite ordinary, but the movie gets more interesting in the third act, which means the part when the two leading characters are getting closer to each other.

To be more interesting, the movie could have been trying to present us, in a more thorough way, the establishment of the link of friendship between Joey and Felicia. I’m not saying that Atom Egoyan has chosen a bad way to do it, but he could have tried to bring forward dialogs that are revealing the characters’ mind, explicitly of implicitly, instead of relying on ordinary dialogs that nonetheless very smart. All in all, the movie is just fine, but it could have been more interesting.

Canadian movie director Atom Egoyan, has decided to adapt this movie from William Trevor’s novel with no particular style, although you can tell that the music occupies a very important place in Felicia’s Journey. Despite having no style, Felicia’s Journey really relies on Atom Egoyan’s remarkable directing competence that really fetch all our interest and the characters’ psychological depth in a very beautiful way that we can remember. Even though the script, which was written by Atom Egoyan himself, could be way better, you can be sure that Egoyan really stands behind the camera to do what he does best: building the suspense behind the camera as well as in front of the camera. All that being said, even though the movie doesn't rely on any particular style, Atom Egoyan certainly knows how to build a gripping suspense that really keeps you guessing until the very end.

Bob Hoskins (Enemy at the Gates), as Joey Hilditch, a man who apparently leads a very ordinary life, delivers an extremely wonderful performance filled with moving nuances. For some people, although Bob Hoskins apparently seems to offer a performance that might look often wooden and simple, it is very important to see that all the character’s psychological depth really lies in Hoskins’ eyes, because this British actor seizes all the moments of silence to show us how tormented and disturbed Joey is. In short, no actor would have been able to portray a character that has a child’s heart and the mind of a killer. If this thriller was an American movie, I’m deeply convinced that Hoskins would have gotten a nomination for the best leading actor at the Oscar.

Elaine Cassidy, the Irish actress who is showing up as Felicia, the titular character, is absolutely magnificent in her role. Although her role is quite simpler than Bob Hoskins’s, she still manages to get our attention with her nice performance and the most moving scenes are definitely all the scenes that involve the characters of Felicia and Joey, because these scenes allow us to understand the character more than we think. In short, Cassidy’s performance might not leave a mark on you the same way Hoskins’s performance does, but she’s definitely a good actress that any ambitious movie producers should think about and she does have a bright future in front of her.

Finally, even if Felicia’s Journey is not the first story of an Irish who goes to England that has been told to me, I really found the movie nonetheless very touching, moving and inspiring because of the majestic performance delivered by the members of the cast that is very well chosen. Well, it’s just a pity that not everybody in the province of Quebec have has heard about this movie, because I’m sure that it’s a movie that most Quebeckers will really like to see, but hopefully, movie lovers from all around the world have given their attention to such a nice Canadian jewel that will probably be considered as a Canadian cinematographic classic in fifty years. Overall, I was very impressed by this movie and I recommend it anyone who is willing to see a brilliant movie from Canada.

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