Eileen
In director
William Oldroyd's new film Eileen, a young woman named Eileen (Thomasin
McKenzie) works at a juvenile prison in 1960s New England. She lives a lonely
life. She's socially awkward and given to fantasizing during her workday. When
she gets home, she is verbally abused by her alcoholic ex-cop father (Shea
Whigam). A glamorous psychologist (Anne Hathaway) arrives at the facility, and
Eileen develops a crush on her. Both women are also interested in a recent
arrival at the prison who is in jail for murdering his father in a particularly
grisly manner.
Oldroyd
establishes and maintains a strong sense of place and atmosphere. It's set
during the Christmas season but the Massachusetts town is gloomy and joyless
(suffice to say this is a "Christmas movie" that is unlikely to appear in basic
cable rotation during future holiday seasons). While I will not disclose the
specifics of plot twists, any viewer paying even slight attention will realize
bad things are going to happen.
The screenplay
was co-written by Ottessa Moshfegh and based on her novel. Moshfegh also wrote
last year's underrated Causeway starring Jennifer Lawrence (and set in
New Orleans). Eileen's tone is different than that of Causeway,
but the films are similar in that they are essentially the study of a
two-person relationship. They are also economically told tales clocking in it
at 90-something minutes in an era that increasingly favors bloated
storytelling. Films like these also depend heavily on the performances of the
two leads, and in Eileen, McKenzie and Hathaway deliver.
In the hands of
a lesser actor and script, Hathaway's character could've been a garden variety
femme fatale, but she comes off as more complex than that. McKenzie captures
Eileen's loneliness and longing as well as her uglier side. The only concern is
that this is the second time in a little over two years that McKenzie has
played a shy but possibly crazy young woman (the other time was in Edgar
Wright's entertaining thriller Last Night in Soho). She's good in both
films, but I hope she doesn't become typecast.
