Starting with Exotica, Egoyan is slowly becoming more mainstream and simplistic. Films like Exotica and The Sweet Hereafter are brilliant because of their intelligent and understated portrayals of disturbed, emotionally destroyed individuals. He denies the characters on screen shows of emotion, forcing the audience to feel the emotion for them. And we feel that emotion because we know and understand the emotional drive behind each character, (dead children in both films) therefore it doesn't need to be seen. In Felicia's Journey, there is very little emotional drive behind the events in the picture. The build-up is brilliant, Atom at the top of his form. Fuzzy video images, horrifying flashbacks for Hoskins, eerie music from Mychael Danna, Arsinee as the mother from hell. But with the lack of any real emotional tension comparative to his earlier works, the ending simply fizzles. It is dull and boring, narratively as well as stylistically. If you were to only watch the last half of the film you would not be able to tell it was an Egoyan picture. That's because it isn't. He's forgotten what makes his pictures great. It's not about the creepy video images and eerie music, it's about the intricacies of human nature that his films are able to reveal to us.
Review of Felicia's Journey
