Drugstore.com Coupons
One morning, Joe notices a hottie but innocent-looking young woman, Felicia (Elaine Cassidy). She is on a journey by foot, far from her home in Ireland. She's looking for her lover Johnny (Peter McDonald), a cad who used her, lied to her, got her pregnant, and left her. Felicia is estranged from her father (Gerard McSorley) because Johnny is Protestant and has joined the British Army.
Poor Felicia is having no luck finding Johnny, based upon the false information he gave her. Joe befriends her and assumes the role of her advocate, but his fascination for her has its creepy aspects, which become more important once it is revealed he is a serial killer.
How others will see it. Felicia's Journey did fairly well on the film festival circuit, and cleaned up at the Genie Awards, the Canadian version of the Oscars. Viewer reaction is mixed. It is too slow-moving for many, and others find Hoskins' performance distasteful. It is a horror movie without the horror, that is, like watching Norman Bates for two hours without the thrill of seeing him dispatch Janet Leigh and Martin Balsam.
How I felt about it. Atom Egoyan is a veteran Canadian writer and director, whose films received little attention prior to The Sweet Hereafter (1997). Felicia's Journey is his first successor feature since his breakthrough, and both films share two casting characteristics: a well known middle-aged actor (Bob Hoskins of Who Framed Roger Rabbit? fame, instead of Ian Holm) and a hottie young actress (Elaine Cassidy, replacing Sarah Polley).
With both The Sweet Hereafter and Felicia's Journey, we are uncertain for some spell whether the male lead is a troubled hero or a sympathetic villain. Holm's behavior was motivated by profit, and his pain was caused by his reckless, addicted daughter. Hoskins' character is much more interesting. He is motivated by loneliness. He hopes that each of his discovered 'lost souls' will want to stay with him. He spins a web of lies to postpone their exit, then murders them once it is clear he can't keep them any longer. His even tempered, empathic exterior conceals his need to wallow in the shared emotional distress of his (eventual) victims, all of whom are attractive young women.
Hoskins' affinity for lost souls is linked to his childhood relationship with his mother, who apparently dominated his life. He appears to have been an only child, and had no father figure. He apparently didn't attend public school, either, spending his days on the set of his mother's cooking shows. A hint of abuse emerges when Gala forces her preteenaged son to eat a chunk of raw liver, which makes him gag.
Like Norman Bates, Hoskins' madness is internalized. He is gracious, and appears asexual and harmless. He 'helps' each of his lost souls, until they 'betray' his kindness to them. He then does to them what he did, or wished to do, to his own mother.