Felicia's Journey

To the list of overlooked Oscar performances this year (Jim Carrey in Man in the Moon, Matt Damon in The Talented Mr. Ripley), add Bob Hoskins tour de force turn in this unsettling psychological drama directed by Atom Egoyan and based on the book by William Trevor. Like Egoyan's Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter, the characters here are damaged souls. Hoskins stars as the sad and solitary Hilditch, a culinary manager whose mother once hosted a cooking show, videotapes of which he watches each night. Eileen Cassidy stars as Felicia, an Irish teen who has come to England in search of her soldier boyfriend, who impregnated, and seemingly, deserted her. Like many "lost girls" before her, Hilditch offers to take Felicia under his wing. As the film unfolds, flashbacks of the pitiable Hilditch's childhood reveal a mother-son relationship that perhaps even Norman Bates would find unhealthy, not to mention one that spells a dire fate for Felicia. A darkly comic thriller worthy of the term Hitchcockian, this is highly recommended. (K. Lee Benson)