Felicia's Journey

Herald rating: ***

Cast: Bob Hoskins, Elaine Cassidy, Arsinee Khanjian

Director: Atom Egoyan

Rating: M

Running Time: 116 mins

Opens: Now showing, Force Centre, Queen St

Review: Russell Baillie

After his quietly brilliant The Sweet Hereafter, Canadian director Atom Egoyan has turned his singular sensibilities to another slice of modern Gothic.

Like his previous film, this is another adaptation of a novel (by William Trevor). And just as The Sweet Hereafter had a devastating central performance by Ian Holm, this contains on by another English veteran, Bob Hoskins.

His portrayal of avuncular factory cafe manager Hilditch, a repressed Morris Minor-driving bachelor gent with a sing-song voice who isn't quite what he seems, is grimly mesmerising.

When we see Hilditch in his 50s time capsule of a house preparing lavish meals while obsessively watching his late mother's cooking show on videotape (on old Egoyan fixation), we get a very big hint that he may be Birmingham's answer to Norman Bates.

And when Hilditch encounters Felicia, a naive Irish teenage girl (Cassidy) who's left home in search of the boyfriend and offers to help, the sense of foreboding creeps ever upwards.

But this psychological thriller is served as something far below room temperature throughout and occasionally swerves toward the distractingly surreal. So while it's a bone-chiller - especially thanks to Hoskins - it suffers in its own way from the icy emotional detachment which made Egoyan's pre-Sweet Hereafter films a love-or-hate experience.

It's an unsettling ride, certainly, and offers a contemplation of that old favourite - the evil that lies just below the surface of everyday life. But for all that, it's less than engaging.