Felicia's Journey DVD Cert 12 111mins  Bob Hoskins

Irish teenager Elaine Cassidy comes to England in search of the boyfriend who left her pregnant. She’s befriended by apparently benign factory chef Bob Hoskins, but her journey is going to come to an unhappy end. Hoskins delivers a devastating depiction of a lonely lost soul in this beautifully judged psycho-drama from Canadian film-maker Atom Egoyan, director of The Sweet Hereafter. With its characters carefully framed in an alien, oppressive industrial landscape, Egoyan’s quietly creepy Beauty and the Beast/Bluebeard fable is brilliantly adapted from a novel by William Trevor. It seems to be taking place in the past: Hoskins lives in a fusty old house full of eggs, toys and memorabilia, the girl comes from a timeless small Irish town, the noisy and oppressive factory is not modern. Increasing the looming sense of dread, Mychael Danna’s ominous music contrasts starkly with the mawkish 1950s ballads sung by Malcolm Vaughan, The Heart of a Child and My Special Angel. Elaine Cassidy is heartbreaking as Felicia, a naive little girl lost looking for “the lawnmower factory” in Birmingham, totally unprepared for the futility of her search. But it is Hoskins’ deadpan portrayal of the delusional Hilditch that chills the marrow.