Eileen, directed by William Oldroyd and adapted from the debut novel of Ottessa Moshfegh, screened at IFFBoston Fall Focus 2023. The movie translates its source material’s sardonic voice and is a classic exercise in building tension.
Presented as part of IFFBoston Fall Focus 2023, Eileen is a hypnotic journey through filth, fitting for the first adaptation of an Ottessa Moshfegh novel. The author’s stories about people on the sidelines of life—not underdogs, but dislikeable protagonists—have earned her celebrity in the literary world, and Hollywood seems to be the next step: currently, Yorgos Lanthimos is rumored to be directing an adaptation of her hit novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation. However, what makes her writing resonant is her sense of irony that always teeters on the edge of misanthropy, which would need to translate for any faithful adaptation.
This irony is replicated by balancing a sleek visual prose with the very crude nature of the plot. The story takes place in 60s Massachusetts, and opens by employing a few familiar signifiers to make this obvious: mid-century music on the radio, old cars in an empty, snowy field, and a couple making out in their backseat. The titular Eileen (Thomasin McKensie) peers from her own car, jealous, horny, or both; she grabs a handful of snow, shoves it down her pants, and the movie jump cuts away as a formality. It’s a weird moment, and one that primes the audience for the movie’s manic psychosexual energy, where anything can happen on screen without warning.
Eileen works at a juvenile prison and dislikes her life. Her coworkers ridicule her out of envy, and her father, an alcoholic ex-cop, is abusive and chastises her for not doing anything with her life. She’s someone who feels trapped in an unsatisfying life, only getting any sort of excitement from her recurring fantasies of sex and murder, which the movie makes viewers complicit in.
This all changes when Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) joins the prison as a new psychiatrist, and Eileen falls into the classic trope of finding liberation via infatuation with an older woman. Meanwhile, the movie puts viewers in a state of hypnosis—it never loses its edge, but things are seemingly going so well, and Eileen seems like she could finally receive a drop of respite. In a pivotal scene, Rebecca invites Eileen for a night out where the pair bond and share a touching dance. Thomasin McKenzie weaponizes our empathy—though we’re well aware of Eileen’s flaws, she sells us the idea of someone who desperately needs to escape her current situation—making the will-they-won’t-they tension between Eileen and Rebecca all the more compelling.
But Eileen carefully creates an atmosphere that tells viewers something’s always about to happen, in a way that is impossible to place; it never lets viewers fully immerse themselves in the narrative. While the movie’s warm palette and controlled camerawork can easily lull you into comfort, every time things feel too normal something lets loose—a jump cut, a hallucination, a gunshot noise. It sets you up to want a happy ending but know that that can’t be, which builds suspense even when nothing dramatic is really happening.
The central theme is satisfaction, the lack thereof, and the perverse ways in which people have to seek it out. When the other shoe finally drops, the movie’s pace seems to speed up tenfold, and the plot becomes a Rube Goldberg contraption of unfortunate reveals and events, leading up to a deliberately unsatisfying conclusion that offers little in the way of catharsis.
Some audiences may find this cheap or unappealing, but Eileen takes joy in its abrupt third act—even if you dislike it, it’s hard not to see it as a ballsy move. The movie deliberately toys with our narrative expectations and sympathy for its characters, and will leave viewers feeling as murky as its color palette.
