On Hulu, I watched the 2023 film Eileen, directed by William Oldroyd, based on the 2015 novel by Otessa Moshfegh, who co-wrote the screenplay with her husband, Luke Goebel. The film starred Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, and Shea Wigham. It's a psychological thriller set in 1964 Massachusetts that starts out seemingly as a young woman's need to escape her damaging home life and falling for a stranger, but reveals itself to be much darker and more complex.
Eileen (McKenzie) is a 24-year old woman taking care of her alcoholic, unemployed police chief father (Wigham), whose drunken antics and paranoid ranting, in part from being a WWII veteran with PTSD, have made him a pariah in their small town, and him being blamed for her mother's slow death from an illness. He exerts control over Eileen by emotionally abusing her, telling her she's plain and ordinary. "Some people, they are the real people. Like in a movie, they're the ones you're watching, they're the ones making moves. And the other people, they're just there filling the space. And you take' em for granted. You think, they're easy. Take a penny, leave a penny. That's you, Eileen." She fantasizes about killing him or herself to escape their dank hellhole of a home.
She works in a corrections facility for teenage boys, being shunned and mocked by her colleagues, like the bitter Mrs. Murray (Siobhan Fallon Hogan), and treated like a mousy kid. Eileen, on occasion, will drive out to a lover's lane secluded area, watching other couples in their cars have sex, and she will masturbate, but then scoop out ice from outside and put it down her pants, to repress her own desires and cool herself down.
A new prison psychologist named Rebecca (Hathaway) comes in, speaking in a clipped Transatlantic sophisticated accent, with platinum blonde hair and fitted dresses. Eileen is immediately transfixed by her mysterious glamour, and Rebecca takes a liking to her, inviting her out to have drinks (where they dance together on the floor and Rebecca swiftly knocks an aggressive man against the wall for trying to cut in), and Eileen, whose sexuality had long been dormant, is falling for her and seeing her as an escape from her dead-end, depressing life.
Rebecca is like a noir heroine off of the movie screens, with a mysterious past, saying how she never likes to stick around for too long, and uses her psychology skills to figure out Eileen, telling her she's meant for bigger things, and saying while she's not "beautiful," she still has an interesting gaze about her. This only pulls Eileen in more, without realizing how manipulative Rebecca is being for her ulterior motives.
At the juvenile detention center, one of the inmates is Lee Polk (Sam Nivola), who is serving time for having stabbed his cop father to death. The townspeople think he's a psycho for killing his father, a "good cop," and think he just snapped and is a monster. Rebecca is assigned to work with him in therapy sessions and assess his character and possibility for reoffending. There is more to the story that I won't spoil, but I will highlight that Marin Ireland as his mother gave an incredible performance in this film that steals the film from the two stars, and was stunning to watch, being a standout actor largely known for her theater career.
Both McKenzie and Hathaway are fantastic in this film. McKenzie, a New Zealand actor, does a great working-class Massachusetts accent, and can play the definition of "still waters run deep," with her looking meek on the outside but wanting to explode. And Hathaway speaks in a Katharine Hepburn-like voice, standing above everyone in her platinum hair and high heels, and has an "above it all" attitude when working in the prison and being amongst the general public of the town, the type that gets quickly gossiped about by small town folks not used to outsiders.
The film is made to look like 1960s film stock, in an intentionally B-movie thriller way, but was shot on digital cameras. It gave a great look to make the film seem older than it actually is, and to be more immersed in the story.
This is a really great film, a movie that seemingly starts like a queer awakening story and then turns into something else. I highly recommend it.
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