You’ll never understand, Eileen.
Different versions of this sentence are said to Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) over the course of William Oldroyd’s film of the same name, and they always carry the same underlying sentiment – there’s something a bit wrong with you, Eileen. Boring, but with a hint of danger. Not destined for a normal life.
The most cutting delivery comes from Eileen’s own father (Shea Whigham). Over a late night drink, he tries to explain – or excuse, more like – his behavior toward his late wife, Eileen’s mother. In a rare clear-eyed moment, he insists to Eileen that no matter what it may have looked like from the outside, he did love her mother. And that’s something Eileen will never be able to understand.
You see, he says, there are people in the world who make an impression. These are the people who, if life were a movie, you wouldn’t be able to take your eyes off of. Then, there are other people who are just … there. Floating by, not making an impact, not forming connections. “That’s you, Eileen,” he says. “You’re one of them.”
Throughout Oldroyd’s film, adapted from Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel of the same name and written by Moshfegh and her husband Luke Goebel, the mask Eileen presents to the world is called into question time and time again. From her father to her coworkers, nobody really likes what they see when they look at her – except, that is, for Rebecca Saint John (Anne Hathaway), who seems to see past Eileen’s carefully constructed expression of normalcy. Rebecca is the sort of woman her father is talking about – the movie star you can’t look away from. But nothing is ever as it seems.
Set in 1960s Massachusetts, “Eileen” explores the art of performance in the real world, ruminating on the ways we strive to hide the worst, most depraved parts of ourselves from everyone else. The film’s visual language strikes a distinct chord, its barren, nasty qualities somehow luridly beautiful. But as soon as “Eileen” starts to really dive into those themes of persona and the risk that comes with truly revealing yourself to someone, it hits an abrupt end, rushing through its final twisted gambit and falling prey to the same impenetrableness that befalls its lead performance.
Before Rebecca enters the picture, Eileen’s inner self has gone largely undiscovered. She gets up, drives to work at a juvenile corrections facility, stops at the liquor store on her way back, and comes home to an alcoholic father who seems thoroughly disgusted by her. On the surface, she’s quite boring, but her imagination runs wild. When we first meet Eileen, she’s parked alone in a lover’s lane, watching another couple get it on in the car a few spots over. During a quiet moment at work, she begins to masturbate as she imagines having sex with one of the prison guards. She frequently envisions killing herself, or killing her father, in bluntly violent ways, keeping herself busy with visions of grandeur as the days meander by.
So Eileen hides these less savory parts of herself from the world, keeping everything as locked down as humanly possible (she literally works in a prison. You can’t get much more repressed than that). But Eileen’s mask doesn’t work quite as well as she might hope. Everyone around her seems to sense an underlying darkness about her. They keep telling her that she doesn’t understand, but no one seems to have the ability – or really care to try to – understand her, and that’s what unsettles them the most. When Rebecca, the attractive new prison psychologist, shows up and senses a kindred spirit in Eileen, that all changes.
From the moment Rebecca is introduced, the film’s visual style becomes a series of well-choreographed juxtaposed images, betraying the rot underneath the normalcy, or even beauty, this world possesses. As she’s taking out the trash, Eileen sees Rebecca drive by in her cherry red convertible – a lone spot of color in cinematographer Ari Wegner’s bleak, empty landscape. As soon as the car passes by, the trash bag splits, slimy garbage leaking all over Eileen’s shoes. When Rebecca invites Eileen for a night out, the grimy bar they find themselves in is lit with a sumptuous red light, sensual as the smoke from Rebecca’s ever-present cigarette curls around her gorgeous face. After Rebecca leaves, the light and smoke almost give Eileen the same ethereal effect before the film smash cuts to the harsh light of morning, a worse-for-wear Eileen waking up in her car covered in her own sick.
No matter how beautiful, or normal, something seems in “Eileen,” there is always something terrible lurking underneath. And in the wintery wasteland of New England, there’s nowhere to hide – not for long, at least. Rebecca comes into the story as a mysterious figure that movies like this prime us to distrust, a femme fatale slowly seducing our hero to the dark side. While Rebecca has her secrets, the movie’s turning point really hinges on the idea that perhaps it’s Rebecca who needs to watch out for Eileen, not the other way around.
But as subversive as that idea might feel, the moment where this turn happens is also when “Eileen” starts to lose the thread. McKenzie plays Eileen as stony and wide-eyed. She has some bite to her, but I wish she showed those teeth – and conversely, her vulnerability – a little bit more often. There’s a blankness to Eileen that’s unsettling, but that blankness can become frustratingly one note at times, particularly when the film’s ending sequence is so dependent on breaking down the walls these characters have surrounded themselves with.
There’s one moment in particular where Eileen has to make a monumental decision – does she show her true self to Rebecca or not? On paper, her choice makes sense, but that persistent blank quality prevents us from seeing it really play out across her face, externally or internally. Hathaway plays her part well, alluring as the movie star of Eileen’s life, and when her performance begins to break down there’s a different, more shattered person waiting underneath the veneer. McKenzie has a more difficult task – we’ve been in her head the entire film, so on some level we know who she is beneath it all. But the ending sequence is so predicated on Eileen shedding the mask she’s worn for so long, it’s disappointing when that shift isn’t palpably felt, the final minutes rushing by and robbing McKenzie of any real space to explore all of the film’s implications.