Directed by William Oldroyd from a screenplay by Luke Goebel and Ottesa Moshfegh, based on Moshfegh’s novel of the same name, “Eileen” (2023) tells the story of the titular character who works at a juvenile detention facility in 1960s Massachusets and how her attraction towards her new co-worker Rebecca leads to both of them getting involved in a twisted criminal enterprise. Part coming-of-age with shades of relationship drama and part homage to the works of Alfred Hitchcock and Patricia Highsmith, “Eileen” feels like it is made from a dark, twisted, sapphic version of traditional film noir tropes, with a heavy dose of relationship drama in the vein of Todd Haynes’ “Carol.”
Eileen (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) is a young woman working at a juvenile detention facility for boys in Massachusetts during the 1960s. She is shunned by her co-workers and is bullied for her lonely existence. In her loneliness, she has sexual fantasies, most predominantly about one of the security guards. At home, Eileen lives with her widowed father (Shea Whigham), who used to be the Chief of Police. Now he is a drunkard and, in bouts of frenzy, whips his gun out and points them at the neighbors and their children. When somewhat sober, he suffers from paranoia and emotionally abuses Eileen, comparing her efficiency to her older sister, though conveniently forgetting that she hates his guts as well. Eileen is shown to daydream about killing herself and her father quite frequently.
At the detention center, Eileen’s patient of interest is a young kid named Lee Polk, who is admitted into the detention center because he had killed his father, Though initially, Eileen’s interest could be attributed to sexual or romantic fixation. But her interest in Polk deepens due to the addition of the new psychologist to the prison staff – Rebecca St. John (Anne Hathaway).
Rebecca and Eileen’s attraction towards her
Rebecca St. John’s joining as the new psychologist perks up Eileen’s interest precisely because of how different she is from Eileen, with her glamorous appearance, propensity towards intellectual conversation, and the New England dialect, which stands out in sharp contrast to the Bostonian dialect employed by Rebecca. The queer subtext is unmistakable precisely because Oldroyd is not interested in making it subtext but text. Rebecca is assigned to work with Lee Polk and his traumatic history, which also induces interest in Eileen, who tries to check the crime scene reports and is caught by Rebecca (not reprimanded).
Lee’s mother, Rita, is invited to talk with Lee under the supervision of Rebecca. Still, as Eileen looks on quizzically at the conversation, Rita, agitated and angry, stands up and walks away, cursing her son, while her son looks at her smiling. When Eileen goes to return Rebecca’s diary to her and sees her talking with Lee, she hesitates. As she walks away, Rebecca calls her again and asks her out for a drink, which Eileen giddily accepts.
That night, we see Eileen carefully choosing a dress and dolling herself up for a night out. She meets up with Rebecca at the only bar in town, and almost immediately, it is evident that Eileen is attracted to her. Whether those feelings are reciprocated is debatable. But Rebecca does seem to share a semblance of that attraction. After refuting a pass by the men sitting opposite her, Rebecca and Eileen dance to the music, with Rebecca even punching a guy trying to be too handsy towards her.
This leads to one of the more quietly revealing moments of Eileen hugging Rebecca and slow dancing with her, with the camera only focusing on her serene face but curiously avoiding showing Rebecca’s. Afterward, as they exit the bar through the back entrance, Rebecca, in an almost seductive tone, says to Eileen how she wonders what dreams she witnesses and how much of an interesting face she has before kissing her on the lips and walking away. Infatuated and almost in a fever dream, Eileen walks inside the bar, smokes the leftover cigarette butt of Rebecca’s, and orders another martini.
The Next Morning
A hard cut later shows Eileen sleeping in her car, having vomited and passed out from drinking last night. As she walks inside her house, she finds Jim has locked her out of her house as a form of punishment, stating that he would not open it until Eileen had read the full “Oliver Twist” book from beginning to end. It’s because Oliver Twist would be grateful to have a home like this, unlike her ungrateful presence.
Eileen is visibly upset, but at that point, she is more interested in entering her house and getting dressed to go to her office. However, her father is stubbornly insistent on not letting her enter. As she finally gives up and starts cleaning her car, a local policeman arrives to inform her that the neighbors have raised complaints about her father’s erratic behavior. As a result, he would have to relinquish his firearm to the stable member of the family, that being Eileen. Of course, stability is relative because we immediately see her dreaming about pointing the gun at her temple and blowing her brains out.
The dream sequence notwithstanding, we see Eileen, happy as a clam, coming to her office, even fending off the snarky comments from her colleagues. But she becomes upset when she learns that Rebecca has already left for the Christmas holidays and has taken Lee Polk’s file with her. Saddened, Eileen sneaks into her office, sits on her chair, and sleeps the entire day on Rebecca’s desk, dreaming about her.
What Happens at the Polk Residence?
On Christmas Eve, we see Eileen lying in her bathtub, half submerged with her head above the water, until she is called by her father because of a phone call for her from a woman. She rushes to pick up the phone and is revealed to have been called by Rebecca, who is inviting her out to dinner at her house that night. Excited and overjoyed, Eileen dresses up and drives up to the house.
As she knocks on the door, she hears a commotion and sees Rebecca opening the door with a struggling house cat in her arms, which she throws out. As Eileen walks inside the shabby little house, we can see that Rebecca is frazzled. Eileen is too lost in her thoughts to comprehend the strangeness of the house or the peculiarity of Rebecca’s actions, like the strange dinner Rebecca serves to Eileen (cheese and pickles), along with sharing the bottle of wine Eileen had gifted her.
But finally, a visibly distressed Rebecca reveals that she had been suspicious of Lee Polk’s traumatic past. She believes that his father had sexually abused him, and Rebecca had come to the Polk residence to question Rita before shocking both Eileen and the audience that the house they are currently in is the Polk residence and that Rebecca had kept Rita hostage in the basement after their conversation had become heated and had led to a scuffle.
Eileen, panicked, wants to leave, but she is persuaded to remain by Rebecca because, according to her, she can’t manage to coerce a confession out of a drugged Rita alone; she needs a friend. Eileen, convinced, brings her father’s gun from the car. Armed with the weapon, the two women walk down to the basement, where Rebecca asks for a confession from Rita, which Rita vehemently denies until Eileen points the gun at her, which scares her.
Tied up to the post in the basement, Rita reveals that she initially felt that her husband had been going to her son’s room to check up on him. But one day, she had walked in on the two of them and had been struck by disbelief. To both Eileen’s and Rebecca’s horror, she reveals that she started to enable her husband because she felt powerless and unable to stop the abuse and also because of her husband’s renewed interest in her, somehow thinking that this is saving her marriage. She would instead give Lee an enema and a bath before going to bed.
As Rita’s story ends, Eileen shoots her in the shoulder without warning, much to the horror of Rebecca. Rita panics at the bullet wound, which increases Rebecca’s panic. She tried to stop the bleeding and had been calmly looking at the scene in front of her before suddenly breaking from her trance. When Rebecca asks why she shot her, Eileen, without missing a beat, says, “I got upset.” As Rebecca tries to give Rita medical attention (or at least how much she possibly can), Eileen instead tries to stop her, reminding her that Rita deserves to die and that Eileen loves Rebecca. Rebecca’s silent reaction says more than words ever could, but then we see the two women forcefully drugging Rita with tranquilizers.
Eileen (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
The Eileen we now see is suddenly buoyed by excitement as if she now belongs in her element. The efficiency she has always been criticized for lacking by her father comes to the forefront when she proposes to frame her father, the drunken ex-chief of police, for the crime. Considering that Jim had been in charge of the Lee Polk case when Lee had been indicted for the murder of his father, it would be an easy enough charge to frame the beleaguered man. They load the now unconscious Rita into Eileen’s car, and Rebecca agrees to meet Eileen at her place while she cleans up the house. Eileen drives away while we see Rebecca return to the house. That is the last we see of her.
As for Eileen, she waits at her house with bated breath for Rebecca. Dawn breaks, and with that, her hopes are dashed because she realizes that Rebecca isn’t coming. As a still-sleeping Jim in his armchair drowsily asks where Eileen is going, we see her thinking for a minute before stating, “I might get on the road.” And she keeps her word because we see Eileen driving her car and dumping it on the edge of the forest, the engine running.
We have seen, since the beginning of the film, that her car’s exhaust is faultily connected, such that her car fills up with smoke whenever it is running. With the windows rolled up and Rita’s unconscious body inside the car, which is filling up with smoke, Rita’s body would be found much later, having died of carbon monoxide poisoning. As for Eileen, we see her accepting a lift from a truck driver and driving away, and as the truck gets on the highway, a smile breaks across her face.
Was Rebecca even real?
There is a strong hint throughout the movie, and the filmmaking techniques being utilized seem to provide credence to the idea that Rebecca was a figment of Eileen’s imagination. She is the version of class and sophistication that Eileen would imagine herself to be one day. But most importantly, she represents the freedom that Eileen avoided attaining because of having to be the caregiver for her father.
One of the key differences from the book is the identity of the shooter. In the book it was Rebecca shooting Rita. The movie shifts that and places the responsibility directly on Eileen’s shoulders, and it lends credence to the flashes of violence or suicidal thoughts of Eileen. Except now those fantasies finally become real.
But that theory fails when we remember that Rebecca had also interacted with other people besides Eileen, and she had also interacted with Lee Polk and Rita separately. Thus, the theory that Rebecca is a separate individual is key to highlighting the specific reason for her disappearance. Rebecca had clearly been disturbed by the troubled psyche of Eileen and how quickly she managed to hatch a plan to take care of Rita Polk, and she had decided to step away from Eileen’s company. Morally, perhaps Rebecca is less compromised than Eileen is, and the fact that Eileen shoots the trigger changes the narrative, putting her in the clear.
Eileen (2023) Movie Review:
To a certain extent, Oldroyd’s direction in this movie, with the grainy cinematography and the yellowish hue and muted colors, brings to mind the aesthetic of Todd Haynes’ “Carol,” and while the twist is very much reminiscent of Hitchockian thrillers, it never conclusively comes together. The narrative design of the third act taking a huge left turn works in making the viewer feel off-balance, and you can’t fault the narrative for not foreshadowing any such inevitability because those suicidal or murderous thoughts of Eileen had been present throughout.
However, while a noir’s primary tone is one of pervading cynicism or dread, for that tone to be effective, it needs to be consistent. What “Eileen” does and thus fails at effectively blinds the viewer. It’s also because the movie doesn’t technically have any bridging moments between the first act and the final act, and the relationship between Eileen and her father and the emotional abuse being hurled at Eileen is not explored with enough depth and fervor that Eileen’s compromised mental state could be hinted at. Thus, her shift and her decision, instead of becoming an inevitability, becomes a twist ending, and not exactly a well-constructed one either.
It’s a shame because the movie’s decision to transform the queer subtext into text while translating from book to film works wonders. And Marin Ireland as Rita is suitably haunting, particularly in the last act monologue, acting around both Mackenzie and Hathaway. She deserved a better film with a less incoherent structural throughline.
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