‘Eileen’ Movie Review [Philadelphia Film Festival 2023]: A Beautifully Trashy Deceiver of a Thriller
Photo from the Philadelphia Film Festival
From Jeremy Kibler
Eileen is beautifully dressed period trash — and that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s like the twisted lady-friend “roommate” to Carol: a psychosexual thriller on a slow-burner. With a film that has the studied panache of Alfred Hitchcock and Todd Haynes, as well as the soul of either filmmaker’s work, one still wishes it were even a little more deceptive, trashier even. It’s surprising, then, that this adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s 2015 novel has been co-adapted by Moshfegh herself and screenwriter Luke Goebel (Causeway).
The titular Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie), a mousy 24-year-old secretary at a prison for young men in 1964, Massachusetts. She lives with her father (an effectively loathsome Shea Whigham), an ex-police sergeant who’s drinking himself to death. Eileen’s life is very unfulfilling, until the prison brings on a glamorous, Harvard-educated psychologist, Dr. Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway). Eileen is instantly hooked, and the more the two get to know one another, it leads to Rebecca inviting Eileen out for a drink at the only local bar. Eileen becomes so intoxicated by the sexy shrink that she accepts an invitation at Rebecca’s house for Christmas Eve, and, well, the film goes places you won’t expect.
At its best, Eileen is always a fascinating character study, throbbing with desire and longing. What blooms into a tantalizing (and unexpectedly funny) drama about a potentially sapphic relationship later becomes something else. That “something else” doesn’t come out of left field, but it’s still surprising, and British theater director William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth) really lets his actors do the heavy lifting.
Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway are spectacular scene partners, feeding off each other in what never feels rehearsed but spontaneous and sensual. All by herself, McKenzie is mesmerizing, a modest, shy-looking but versatile actress fully capable of taking risks and bringing subtle nuance and sneakily deadpan humor to a character who could have just been crazier than a shithouse rat. Eileen is an odd bird, for sure, but she’s also vulnerable and sexually repressed; sometimes, Eileen just can’t help herself, fantasizing about a guard at work or watching a couple make out at a lover’s point (luckily, for the latter, she can put out her own fire with some snow outside her car). Anne Hathaway plays Rebecca almost as an idea more than a fully realized person, and that’s surely the point. As this enigmatic blonde bombshell who oozes moxie and cool, she gets to be vivacious and endlessly intriguing.
And as Mrs. Polk, the distraught mother of a boy accused of patricide, Marin Ireland brings down the house in one of her two scenes, delivering a devastating monologue that lands with a punch to the gut. A shout-out also needs to go out to Siobhan Fallon Hogan, who never fails to make an impression as small as her part may be, here playing one of the prison secretaries.
On a technical level, this is a film you want to live inside, back to a time when smoking looked sexy. Cinematographer Ari Wegner brings a wintry New England atmosphere that’s made both cozy and chilly, Olga Mill’s exquisite costume design reveals shadings about these characters and their personalities, and the horn-heavy score by Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed Parry keeps us off-kilter.
There are startling bursts of violence along the way (mostly from Eileen’s head), making the switch into legitimate danger not feel like it comes out of nowhere. But just as the other shoe drops, things end up getting wrapped up too quickly for an anticlimactic shrug. Once Eileen hitches a ride in a semi-truck, you want to go with her and you want to know what happens next. Until a conclusion that feels incomplete somehow, Eileen is pulpy, sexy, and unpredictable.
Rating: 3.5/5
Eileen screened at the 32nd Philadelphia Film Festival and hits theaters on December 1, 2023.
