Felicia's Journey
Like Hitchcock, Atom Egoyan envisions family life as a potential hotbed  of  literal or figurative violence and incest. InFelicia's Journey, Egoyan's  adaptation ofWilliam 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 toPsycho's Tony Perkins,  Hoskins's troll is so obsessive, so traumatized, 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 travelers. 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 Journeytours familiar  Egoyan territory--an industrialized 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 asExoticaorThe Sweet  Hereafter.--Kathleen Murphy