Directed by William Oldroyd
Written by William Oldroyd, Luke Goebel
Starring Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham
Release Date December 8th, 2023
Published December 8th, 2023
Someone is sitting in a car on the side of a lake with smoke filling the vehicle. Someone is apparently committing suicide by smoke inhalation. The scene shifts back in time, the owner of the car, whom you presume is the person committing suicide in the opening scene. We meet our main character, Eileen (Thomasin McKenzie) as she's in this same car, sitting next to this same lake but this time she's surrounded by other cars. She's alone in her vehicle while watching other cars where people are making out. She starts to touch herself but thinks better of it. Opening her car door, Eileen grabs some dirty snow and stuffs it down the front of her dress, seeming to quell her burning loins.
Sexual repression and inexperience has a big role to play, or so you assume, in Eileen as our mousy protagonist comes out of her shell when basking in the glow of an older and more worldly woman. Eileen works as an assistant secretary at a prison somewhere in Massachusetts. Her days are the same, working, going unnoticed, suffering from sexual frustration, and going home to her drunk bully of a father, a former cop named Jim (Shea Whigham). Having been retired or fired from being the chief of police, he now spends everyday getting drunk and waving his service revolver around.
Only Eileen appears capable of calming him down though her means of doing that is to fetch him a fresh bottle. Eileen's life is altered forever when she meets to the prison psychiatrist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway, in full Hitchcock blonde mode). Rebecca seems to adopt the mousy and shy Eileen as the only person close to her in age and attractiveness. Eileen seemingly seduces the inexperienced Eileen who realizes that she doesn't mind having an older woman attracted to her romantically. This doesn't go anywhere but, it does provide motivation for a third act twist that's intended to be shocking but feels more random, as if the story needed to create drama that just hadn't emerged to that point.
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