A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Search This Blog
Showing posts with label Atom Egoyan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atom Egoyan. Show all posts

Sunday, February 1, 2026

Felicia's Journey (Atom Egoyan, 1999)

Bob Hoskins and Elaine Cassidy in Felicia's Journey

Cast: Bob Hoskins, Elaine Cassidy, Arsenée Khanjian, Sheila Reid, Nizwar Karanj, Peter McDonald, Gerard McSorley, Marie Stafford, Brid Brennan, Susan Parry. Screenplay: Atom Egoyan, based on a novel by William Trevor. Cinematography: Paul Sarossy. Production design: Jim Clay. Film editing: Susan Shipton. Music: Mychael Danna. 

A tightly wound performance by Bob Hoskins and a touchingly vulnerable one by Elaine Cassidy make Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey memorable. Cassidy is Felicia, an Irish girl who comes to Birmingham in search of the young man who made her pregnant and receives the sinister aid of Joe Hilditch (Hoskins), who runs a catering business. Egoyan subordinates suspense to character development and mood, which saves Felicia's Journey from being a routine and generic serial killer story. Paul Sarossy's cinematography avoids the clichés of darkness and shadow characteristic of the genre, and Mychael Danna's sometimes off-beat score also sidesteps familiarity. 

Posted by
Links: , , ,
Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)