Eileen review – Anne Hathaway transfixes in off-kilter thriller

Sundance film festival: the Oscar winner gives a pitch-perfect turn in an adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s hit novel that doesn’t push its weirdness far enough

There’s a fantastically well-measured performance from Anne Hathaway in the strange, if not quite strange enough, thriller Eileen, an adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh’s Booker prize-shortlisted novel. She’s an actor who doesn’t always find her sweet spot, admirably trying to show extensive range for a star of her high wattage, yet often not proving to be the right match for her material, big swings frustratingly filed away as big misses.

Hathaway has an outsized energy that can jar with roles that require a performer who can more convincingly, quietly disappear, and so in Eileen, where her character Rebecca is exploding into the drab world of 1960s Massachusetts as a glamorous, and potentially dangerous, bombshell, it’s a match-up that feels like kismet. Her arrival is a ground-shifter for bored 24-year-old Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) whose life consists of caring for her cruel alcoholic father (a horribly believable Shea Wigham, a sterling character actor long overdue for more attention), controlling her sexual desire and working a thankless job as a secretary at a juvenile facility. When Rebecca joins the staff as a psychologist, Eileen, like the men surrounding her, is unable to stop staring, a sudden flash of colour in an otherwise muted world.

But Eileen isn’t quite sure what she wants or needs from Rebecca and then what Rebecca is willing to give her. With the setting, age difference and styling, there are obvious comparisons to Todd Haynes’s Carol, but the film is far less open about its queerness, in ways that intrigue but also frustrate. Eileen’s magnetic pull to Rebecca is hard to define in a way that many queer people can understand. Do I want to befriend this person? Do I want to be with this person? Or do I want to be this person? It’s in the film’s initial stages, where these and many other questions percolate, that Eileen is as its most effective, fizzing with unpredictability.

British director William Oldroyd, who announced himself by grabbing us all by the throat with 2016’s electrifying adaptation of Lady Macbeth, again fascinates himself with the story of curious women in desolate places, rejecting their given roles of the period and like that film, ultimately choosing violence instead of compliance. But Oldroyd, working off a script from Moshfegh and her husband, author Luke Goebel, doesn’t have quite as much to work with here, a story of initial psychological complexity turning into something far less juicy. The shared connection between Eileen and Rebecca harks back to that in Shirley, an excellent yet under seen Sundance drama from 2020, where Elisabeth Moss’s unconventional author finds a common perversity with a young woman and there’s a thrill to watching that game of push-and-pull play out on a razor’s edge.

Here, rather than indulging in anything quite as rich or murky, the women end up in a random, thinly developed crime plot that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense within the context of the film, leaving us in a less compelling and specific place than where we started, a boil reduced to a simmer. The earlier flashes of psychosexual strangeness fade and I found myself craving a little bit more oddity from a film, and characters, that hinted at a more daring and depraved destination. Hathaway remains ferociously alluring, though, her finest performances in years, never once making you question how and why she would be able to get anyone to do anything. McKenzie is a bit wobblier, with an accent that falters, but there’s a one-scene wonder from Marin Ireland that steals all remaining air from the last act, a devastatingly difficult monologue delivered with a punch.

It’s the last great moment in a film that then sputters to nothing. Oldroyd never seems entirely sure just how pulpy and weird his material is, unable to decide how far to push, the odd stylistic flourish and burst of lurid music ultimately feeling incongruous in a film that’s otherwise visually quiet. The effect is that we also don’t quite know what it is that we’re watching either, a film with its freak flag frustratingly flying at half-mast, all that curiosity waiting to be sated.

  • Eileen premiered at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Contributor

Benjamin Lee in Park City, Utah

The GuardianTramp

Related Content

Article image
The Last Thing He Wanted review – misfiring Anne Hathaway thriller
Mudbound director Dee Rees stumbles with a confused Netflix adaptation of Joan Didion’s political thriller about a conflicted journalist in the 80s

Benjamin Lee in Park City

28, Jan, 2020 @9:26 PM

Article image
Sundance 2023: Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Julia Louis-Dreyfus lead lineup
After cancelling in-person events for the 2022 edition, the Utah-based festival will return to physical premieres for the first time since 2020

Benjamin Lee

07, Dec, 2022 @6:00 PM

Article image
Passages review – Ira Sachs excels with thorny love triangle drama
The writer-director makes a return to form with an explicit, emotionally bruising film about a bisexual narcissist

Benjamin Lee in Park City, Utah

24, Jan, 2023 @6:52 PM

Article image
Past Lives review – delicately sad romantic drama is a real achievement
Playwright Celine Song makes her film debut with a beautiful, aching story about childhood sweethearts reconnecting

Benjamin Lee in Park City

22, Jan, 2023 @12:38 AM

Article image
Magazine Dreams review – Jonathan Majors is a marvel in bruising bodybuilder drama
There are overly familiar shades of Taxi Driver and Joker in this grim character study lifted by a sensational central performance

Benjamin Lee in Park City, Utah

23, Jan, 2023 @3:32 PM

Article image
Drift review – beautiful yet undercooked character study
Cynthia Erivo stars as a west African migrant who befriends Alia Shawkat’s American émigré in this quiet character drama

Adrian Horton

25, Jan, 2023 @7:36 PM

Article image
You Hurt My Feelings review – Nicole Holofcener delivers another winner
The smart, observant writer-director reunites with a never-better Julia Louis-Dreyfus for a funny and piercing film about honesty in relationships

Benjamin Lee in Park City, Utah

23, Jan, 2023 @10:15 PM

Article image
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt review – experimental film pulls on the senses
Raven Jackson’s gorgeous, sparsely worded debut film evokes the non-linear memories of one Black woman in Mississippi.

Adrian Horton

27, Jan, 2023 @6:36 PM

Article image
The Starling Girl review – Eliza Scanlen shines in transgressive coming of age drama
Sundance film festival: the Sharp Objects star steals the spotlight as a 17-year-old fundamentalist Christian in an intoxicating, forbidden relationship with her older youth pastor

Adrian Horton

21, Jan, 2023 @8:45 PM

Article image
Cat Person review – viral short story becomes violent big screen thriller
The transformation of Kristen Roupenian’s nuanced internet-breaking story of modern dating is uneasily turned into a more literal shocker

Benjamin Lee in Park City, Utah

22, Jan, 2023 @6:40 AM