journal features

movie review - Felicia's Journey

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Vancouver, 2001.07.16

This is Atom Egoyan's latest movie. It revolves around a pregnant young woman from Ireland, who's searching for her boyfriend. He's told her he's left for England to work in a lawnmower plant. In reality, he's joined the British army (something he can't have them knowing, back home).

Her search lands her in the clutches of Hoskins's ageing bachelor, a chef who watches tapes of his late mother's cooking show, and who seems to have been collecting and dispatching young women with his beat up little car.

The plot unwinds slowly, as Hoskins's derangement becomes more clear, and the girl's situation becomes more desperate. Egoyan manages to focus more on the story telling than the characterisations (unlike in his earlier flicks), and just seems to keep getting better.

Recommended.

rand()m quote

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov