Buried alive in snowy, small-town Massachusetts, Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) is a sputtering cherry bomb ready to pop. At age 20-something, she's employed as an office paper-pusher at a local juvie lockup for wayward boys, where she entertains carnal thoughts about certain of the guards and inmates, and at night drives out to park in the woods and spy on couples in other cars steamily making out. Achieving a carnal peak during one of these self-service sessions, she reaches outside to grab a handful of snow and stuffs it down her pants.
No one cares that Eileen is quietly, desperately unhappy — not her middle-aged co-workers ("Well look what the cat dragged in") and especially not her defeated dad (Shea Whigham), a boozy widower with whom she still shares her cheerless childhood home. Eileen is a solo drinker herself, and we can almost envision the life of cramped boredom she sees stretching out ahead of her.
Then Rebecca Saint John arrives, in a cherry red convertible, fresh from New York City. Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) is the new staff psychologist at the prison, and she turns Eileen's life upside-down almost instantly. Unlike the mousy Eileen — or anyone Eileen knows — Rebecca is seductively stylish. She knocks back martinis at the local workingmen's bar and fires up cigarettes with relish. ("Nasty habit," she allows, as Eileen listens adoringly. "That's why I like it.") Rebecca is smart (Harvard) and sly, the very definition of a bad role model. And Eileen is eager to follow her lead. How misguided an idea this is quickly becomes clear.
Based on Ottessa Moshfegh's 2015 debut novel, "Eileen" is a picture rich with the sort of delectable perversity originated by Patricia Highsmith. The script, by Moshfegh and Luke Goebel, gives director William Oldroyd (the 2016 "Lady Macbeth") some fine spikey scenes and juicy lines to work with. ("You're different these days," Eileen's dad tells her as Rebecca's spell takes hold. "You're almost interesting.") Also in top form is cinematographer Ari Wegner, who wraps the story and its punchy surprises in a poisoned Yuletide glow.
Hathaway, so long and puzzlingly underrated, gives a strong but carefully un-showy performance as Rebecca, conveying the character's heedless appetites ("I live a little differently than most people") without dimming her aura of dangerous mystery. And McKenzie surmounts her delicate prettiness to show us the banked excitement of a wallflower who suddenly finds the dreamy Rebecca on her otherwise empty dance card. "You're not a lost cause," her entrancing new friend tells her. "No one is."
Well, maybe.
Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
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