Charles Laird
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 24/00) - As the Yellowknife cultural scene rocks to the tune of Caribou Carnival, The Far North Film Festival offers an added treat to those out celebrating cultural pride and the end of winter.

For the second year in a row, the festival, which will run April 1-2, will host a feast of Canadian cinema at the Capitol Theatre.

Starting on Saturday, April 1, Atom Egoyan's Felicia's Journey, based on a novel by William Trevor, tells the story of two lost souls. Felicia (Elaine Cassidy), a young Irish girl, takes the ferry to England. Kindly Mr. Hilditch (Bob Hoskins) sees her wandering the streets and offers her guidance. We slowly gather that Mr. Hilditch is not a nice man and that Felicia is in some kind of danger.

One can only imagine how this plot would have been treated by most Hollywood studios -- chases, brutality, and mindless gore. But in Egoyan's hands the tale becomes a haunting reverie on separation and loss, a carefully crafted treatment of one of his favourite themes -- the difficulty people have achieving real intimacy. Marvellous and stunning, it's a simple story of depth and resonance.

As Top of the Food Chain opens, things are seemingly normal in the tiny town of Exceptional Vista. Sure, the TV reception's on the fritz, the local women are practising alchemy and the sheriff is behaving strangely.

Enter atomic scientist Dr. Carol Lamont (Campbell Scott). He's come to Exceptional Vista to take a short vacation from "the institute." He immediately stumbles upon a dead human corpse. Clearly, something very odd is going on. And since the only people around to deal with this problem are pretty darn odd themselves, the rest of Top of the Food Chain unreels like a head-long plunge into weirdness.

Spectacular and more fun than any late-night B-movies that inspired it, this film entices you into a world beyond the boundaries of normal.

Four Days focuses on a changing of the guards within the criminal underworld. Fourteen-year-old Simon (Kevin Zegers) watches his ex-convict father, Milt (William Forsythe), get shot at by a security guard during a bank robbery in Montreal. The boy winds up with the money and travels to northern Quebec. Simon is "the Kid," an independent young man who is steadfastly devoted to his tough father, Milt, a small-time crook. The Kid doesn't know his father has been killed; all he knows is the plan calls for him to meet his father up north. So he sets out on his journey.

Four Days is billed as a bank-heist-gone-wrong-road- movie. That it is. But it's also about the bond between father and son. No matter how screwed up a parent is, it takes a lot to break that bond.

Sunday will offer two additional films: The Five Senses and the Divine Ryans.

Look for a schedule of movie times in next Friday's Yellowknifer.