Felicia's Journey

(Artisan)

The title wanderer (Elaine Cassidy) in this Atom Egoyan adaptation of William Trevor's schematic novel is a naive, pregnant Irish teenager who heads to an industrially blighted England in search of her faithless lover. Instead she finds Hilditch (a lubricious Bob Hoskins), manager of dining services in a large plant, who offers to "help" her. He's just a creep, of course, and Cassidy's Felicia is an infuriatingly passive victim. Some of The Sweet Hereafter's quasi-mysticism surges toward the end as the journey takes an unexpected turn. Otherwise, the terrain is familiar: a bus ride with no unscheduled stops.