Grade: (8.7/10)
Eileen follows the misery of a lonely young woman whose burgeoning relationship with a coworker breathes excitement in her agonizingly dull life.
Plot (44/50)
Seeing as how the film is a sort of character study in a noir setting, it has a very defined scope. As a result, there’s not much going on outside of Eileen’s life, and there doesn’t need to be. There’s enough substance to her story to keep the audience engaged. The short runtime demands an effective structure, but that doesn’t prove to be an issue either. Because we spend plenty of time with Eileen in the first act, we’re able to digest her downward spiral as the story progresses.
Misery
The first act of the film is intriguingly straightforward. We follow the life of a young woman who works as a secretary at a boys prison. She lives with her drunken, crazed father whose parenting is practically non-existent. She doesn’t seem to have any friends or hobbies, and all of her co-workers are older men and women who care little about her. Her life is miserable. To escape the misery, she masturbates to sexual fantasies involving people that don’t even notice her. She’s got nothing going on, and everybody knows it.
Eileen does seem fascinated with one case, in particular. The case involves a son brutally murdering his father in his sleep seemingly out of nowhere. The son refuses to answer any questions or justify himself in court, so he’s obviously sent to prison. It’s a case that’s baffled everyone, but due to its disturbing nature, no one wants to dig any deeper. All of that’s about to change, however, as the prison counselor is due to be replaced.
Excitement
The new prison counselor, Rebecca, arrives the next day to little fanfare. None of the grandfathered employees are particularly thrilled with the prospect of change. Eileen, on the other hand, is obsessed with Rebecca from the moment she steps out of her car in the parking lot. Much of that is because Rebecca is everything Eileen isn’t. She’s dominant, witty, and sexy. She knows what she wants and she won’t take no for an answer. Most importantly, Rebecca demands attention, whereas Eileen is virtually invisible.
Things start to get interesting for Eileen when she shows Rebecca to her locker. Rebecca shows an interest in Eileen and the two have a conversation which only furthers Eileen’s obsession. Later on, Eileen locates Lee Polk’s file to learn more about his patricide. Rebecca notices this and takes it upon herself to study the case further. After reviewing the case, she calls Rita Polk, Lee’s mother, in for a visit with her son. Not long into the visit, Rita storms off after becoming upset with her son’s lack of remorse. Eileen watches as Rebecca takes an uncuffed Lee to her office for further questioning. Rebecca also invites Eileen for drinks later that night.
Eileen is ecstatic. For the first time in who knows how long, she has something to look forward to. She get dressed up and meets Rebecca at the bar. Rebecca’s already several martinis in when Eileen arrives. The composed front is already starting to wear off, but Eileen is too enamored to notice or care. After a personal conversation, Rebecca takes Eileen to the dance floor. The two dance (and drink) the night away. This is already the best day of Eileen’s life. Rebecca’s kiss goodbye is only the cherry on top.
Pent Up Frustration
The next morning, Eileen wakes up in her own puke. Somehow, she manages to drive home, but she passed out in the car. Eileen’s father, Jim, is upset with her. He refuses to open the door, so she has to crawl in through a window. She demands the car keys so she can get to work, but he insists that she explain herself first. Eventually, he relents, and she’s able to get to work. Once there, she’s devastated to learn that Rebecca won’t be in for the entire week. She takes the opportunity to go snoop around Rebecca’s office before taking off.
The day doesn’t get any better. She returns home to find her father unconscious on the floor with his head bleeding. She takes him to the hospital for treatment. There, the doctor tells her that if he doesn’t change his ways, he’s going to drink himself to death. When they return home, Eileen tries to get her father to see reason, but it’s no use. What follows is a brutal conversation where Jim tells Eileen that he’s noticed a change in her demeanor before essentially telling her that she’s not meant to amount to anything. Needless to say, he takes her for granted.
Without Rebecca, Eileen’s life seemed to revert back to utter misery. Then, out of nowhere, Rebecca calls. She invites Eileen over for a Christmas Eve dinner. The excitement returns to Eileen’s life once again. Later on, she gets dressed and drives over to the address Rebecca gave her. She arrives to a messy house and an on-edge Rebecca. Rebecca goes on a tirade as they drink wine. Then, out of nowhere, Rebecca lets out a manic scream. Eileen doesn’t know how to react, so she retreats to the bathroom.
Insanity
When she returns, Rebecca starts talking about the Polk case. That’s when she stuns Eileen with the revelation that this is the Polk house. Furthermore, Rebecca has Rita Polk tied up in the basement. Eileen is shocked. She tries to leave, but Rebecca convinces her to stay. Rebecca tells Eileen that she needs her as a witness so that she doesn’t go to jail. All they need to do is get Rita to confess to what went on in her household. At some point, Jim had caused one too many disturbances in the neighborhood, so he was forced to officially hand over his gun to Eileen as its caretaker. Eileen retrieves the gun from the car.
When Rebecca’s interrogation doesn’t work, Eileen points the gun at Rita. At that point, Rita concedes. She admits that her husband would regularly rape their son as a child. She pleads her innocence, but Eileen is triggered, so she shoots her anyways. Rebecca freaks out. She doesn’t want to go to jail, so they force Rita to take a bunch of pills that quickly kill her. Rebecca is still freaking out, so Eileen hatches a plan. She proposes that she take the body to her house and frame her dad for the murder. Meanwhile, Rebecca would gather her stuff and drive straight over to pick Eileen up. The two would then head off to New York together.
Rebecca agrees to the plan. They dump Rita’s body in the trunk and head their separate ways. Eileen drives over to her house per the plan. She gathers her stash of money and prepares to leave her miserable life behind. She waits and waits, but Rebecca never shows. When she finally realizes that she’s been played, she changes course. She drives the car to the woods, puts Rita’s body in the front seats, and turns the car on with the windows closed. The car should explode, thus covering her tracks. She then hitches a ride, presumably to New York.
Overall Thoughts
This was quite the ride. The mystery surrounding Rebecca and the Polk case made for a captivating watch. It was only a matter of time before Rebecca lost it, and that knowledge kept things interesting. That Eileen was so oblivious only added to the suspense. I was pleasantly surprised with how meaty the story was given the runtime. With that said, I felt like the third act was a bit undercooked. The ending is inconclusive. Now, after I’ve had some time to further digest the film, I believe this was the intent.
I’ve done a bit of research about the book this film was adapted from, so I now know that Eileen is an unreliable narrator. In hindsight, there are a number of scenes that hint at this. This forces us to reconsider the key assumption that Rebecca is real. It’s certainly possible that Eileen’s pent up frustration translated into this exciting imaginary person. We saw some of her extreme fantasies. Sure, they were on a smaller scale, but the leap to a recurring fantasy isn’t that far. She also very much could’ve been real. The ending is intentionally ambiguous as to leave both possibilities on the table, and it works, so hats off to that.
Character Development (13/15)
As I mentioned earlier, the film is essentially a character study of its titular character. The first act paints the picture of a young woman who’s endured so much life-sucking misery and is dangerously close to a breakdown. That introduction puts a greater focus on even her slightest mannerisms because now the audience is watching for her breaking point. Adding a character like Rebecca enhances the dynamic even further because she is close to a breaking point, albeit in a completely different way. Ultimately, Rebecca’s breakdown serves as a catalyst for Eileen’s point of no return.
Eileen’s Psyche
To understand Eileen, we must first understand her relationships with her family. Her mother is dead, and her sister doesn’t want anything to do with their father, so she stays away. Her father is a drunken, paranoid ex-sheriff who only takes a break from drinking to threaten the neighbors with his gun. Eileen doesn’t have any friends or a romantic partner, and her co-workers are a couple generations older than her. Basically, she has no one. The one person in her life that she should be able to confide in and depend on is a total liability. Needless to say, she’s lonely.
It gets worse. Eileen doesn’t have any hobbies or interests. She works as a secretary at a boys prison. Her daily routine is as follows: go to work, buy alcohol on the way home, give alcohol to toxic father, go to end. Occasionally, her father will initiate a conversation with her, but it’s always so negative. He’s either praising her sister, talking about how much he misses her mother, or telling Eileen how little she matters. The message is jarring in itself, but when you consider that Eileen’s been getting this from her father for YEARS without any sort of positivity to counter, the situation becomes horrific.
To say that Eileen is repressed would be an understatement. She lacks agency or personality or motivation. Simply put, she’s nothing, and everybody knows it. And again, she’s been in this crushing state for years now. Eileen’s only respite from this dull existence is her fantasizing. But even then, she doesn’t allow herself to let go. She enjoys sweets, yet she denies herself the satisfaction by spitting the candy out. That level of sustained frustration can drive a person mad.
Rebecca
Whether Rebecca is a real person or a product of Eileen’s imagination has no impact on her character. Eileen is obsessed with Rebecca, so in either case, it’s worth analyzing Rebecca’s qualities to better understand Eileen. In essence, Rebecca is everything Eileen isn’t. Eileen wants to be seen. She wants to be someone, anyone even. She’s been invisible for so long, so of course naturally attracted to Rebecca’s confident, accomplished, and assertive attitude. The film isn’t exactly subtle about Eileen wanting to be more like Rebecca. Whether it’s the drinking or the smoking, Eileen’s playing copycat.
The other side of Rebecca’s personality is just as important. She’s sexy and adventurous. She opts for the single life because she doesn’t want to be beholden to a man. We’ve seen through Eileen’s fantasies that she wants to be desired. This quickly spills over into her relationship with Rebecca. Eileen dresses up and hangs on Rebecca’s every word. She lets Rebecca take charge at all times and is unable to say no to her. There’s a moment where Jim explicitly tells Eileen that “love will make you crazy,” not that she’ll ever have to worry about that (this was a particularly nasty insult). Again, not very subtle.
In the end, love played its part, but it didn’t deal the decisive blow because there was no decisive blow. Eileen just reached her capacity for misery, and she violently lashed out. Mrs. Polk’s confession was the straw that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. To be fair, the Polk case is uniquely sickening, I don’t mean to minimize that. Hearing Mrs. Polk describe the horrors she allowed was so traumatic that it broke through Eileen’s high tolerance for misery and pushed her over the edge, but Eileen was already so strained that it could’ve been anything. It’s anticlimactic by design. Eileen’s justification for shooting Mrs. Polk encapsulates this point: she was upset. No more, no less.
Theme/Messages (4/5)
- There are dangers to bottling up any intense emotion for so long.
- Often times, accountability dissipates past the explicit offender because justice doesn’t always have time for intentionality. That doesn’t change from the fact that silent observers are complicit. It’s just so hard to measure.
Acting (14/15)
The impact of the film hinged on how well Eileen could be brought forth, and Thomasin McKenzie (Eileen) absolutely nails the role. I was particularly impressed with how well she was able to convey Eileen’s mental state through her eyes. Anne Hathaway (Rebecca) was also brilliant. She was able to strike a delicate balance between controlled and borderline unhinged which made her eventual explosion quite impactful. Marin Ireland (Rita Polk) and Shea Whigham (Jim) rounded out a seriously well-acted film with strong performances of their own.
Cinematography (12/15)
- The cinematography aptly matched the darker tone of a film noir.
- Nice contrast shot of Rebecca arriving at the prison in a red car while all the other cars in the parking lot were in muted colors
- Another great contrast shot of Rebecca in white leaning against the wall with all the prisoners sitting in a dimly lit area during the pageant