Felicia's Journey

Egoyan's adaptation of William Trevor's novel is a genuinely unsettling affair that benefits immensely from the director's ability to show both the Midlands and Hoskins' face as unfamiliar, faintly sinister landscapes. The film centres on the charged encounter between innocent Irish colleen Cassidy, searching for her errant boyfriend in and around Birmingham, and factory catering-manager Hoskins, a kindly, yet lonely bachelor deeply disturbed by fantasies inspired by his own childhood. The flashbacks to Ireland are too often underlined by pastoral folk music (whereas those to Hoskins' youth, with Khanjian as a Fanny Craddock-style TV chef, are delightfully witty), and Hoskins' accent is occasionally a little wobbly, but mostly this is a beautifully crafted affair, with Egoyan's script making the most of various dark ironies while his typically confident direction creates an intense mood.