It's circa 1965 and Eileen Dunlop (Thomasin McKenzie) is 24 years old. Four years previous she left college and moved back to her small Massachusetts town to help take care of her sick mother. In time mother died and with her sister married and living some distance away, Eileen stayed in town to take care of their father, a (forcibly) retired Sheriff whose an alcoholic and verbally abusive (Shea Whigham, whose good in these kind of parts). Eileen drives a smoke prone car to her job at what appears to be the towns major employer, the state juvenile detention facility, where she is a kind of junior secretary whose chief responsibility is checking in visitors. Eileen is naive, melancholy, very lonely and starved for physical affection.
It's December and the facilities psychologist has just retired, replaced by a glamorous and unconventional lady doctor from out of town named Rebecca (Ann Hathaway). Rebecca takes an interest in Eileen, who quickly becomes enamored by her. They share an interest in the mystery of a quite young inmate who brutality murdered his father, there also seems to be some forbidden romantic sparks generating between the two women. Rebecca invites Eileen over to her house on Christmas eve and... well as much as I'd like to talk about it, I'm going to leave the narrative here.
'Eileen' is the biggest surprise I've had at the movies this year. A grey, understated, slow burn of a film with nods to Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk. A character study and sort of unconventional mystery. 'Eileen' is a near under the radar film that deserves a bigger audiance. ***1/2
No comments:
Post a Comment