Eileen
‘You’re very different these days. You’re almost interesting.’
Based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2015 novel of the same name, the eponymous Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) lives something of a lonely half-life in 1960s New England, USA. She wakes, she goes to work at the local prison, buys alcohol for her ex-cop father (Shea Whigham) and lives vicariously through her daydreams – until the glamorous and captivating Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) arrives, changing everything. Eileen quickly falls under her spell, but is the new-found freedom Eileen is experiencing also fraught with the possibility of danger?
This is William Oldroyd‘s follow up to his 2016 directorial debut Lady Macbeth, which introduced the world to Florence Pugh and there’s definitely parallels between the two films. Both films have women at the centre who are trapped and confined by the expectations of their respective time period. They yearn to feel something that they ‘should’ consider wrong, contemplating illicit means to finally fulfil that innate desire they crave. Their sense of despair may as well be an additional character. Whereas Lady Macbeth is set in 19th century rural England, many of the same constraints present themselves in Eileen’s existence in 1960s New England. Although she in her early 20s, she has simultaneously been forced into being older, near enough a carer to her no-longer working alcoholic father, yet has also been infantilised by the rigid and intrusive attitudes of her small-town life.
McKenzie plays these contradictory depths with aplomb, a wonderous mix of unknowable and inscrutable yet ultimately transparent. Eileen’s motivations are clear, but her actions to achieve them are unpredictable, as if she herself is uncertain of the extents she will go to just to feel something. Having spent a life being unperceived, Rebecca’s gaze is both hypnotic and euphoric. Moshfegh named the character after the unseen yet powerful eponymous figure in Daphne du Maurier novel and Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 adaptation. In Rebecca she has died prior to the story starting, yet she her hold and power over the household remains – they continue to be shackled to her wants and ways. It’s true of her namesake, Hathaway’s Rebecca is in less of the film as you may expect – but she lingers beyond the frame, just as she lingers within Eileen’s mind, upending all she has known before.
Oldroyd and writer Luke Goebel, who adapted the story with Moshfegh, are successful at establishing the inner life of Eileen and making the viewer unwittingly complicit in her twisty tale of obsession. Together they navigate both tonal shifts and irregular pacing that would otherwise induce whiplash and a blurring of reality & fantasy they make every next step uncertain. Where the film struggles is in maintaining this throughout, what starts out initially as intriguing ultimately becomes frustrating in it’s noncommittal unknowability. The consistent use of dream sequences reduce the impact of an outrageous final act, as we wait to discover if it too really happened.
The result is an unsettling feel-bad almost-psychological thriller with gothic undertones, driven by two stunningly sensuous performances by actresses at the height of their powers.
[3.5/5 stars]
Eileen is in UK cinemas from Friday 1st December.
Charlotte Sometimes 