Director William Oldroyd’s mouth-watering drama, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, misleads and misdirects all the way to the shocker ending.
Like some dark choose-your-own-adventure story, it’s easy to imagine 10 different outcomes for shy, downtrodden Eileen throughout the shapeshifting film. None of them are what you get. Thomasin McKenzie plays the demure 24-year-old title character, who left school and came home to a 1960s Boston suburb to take care of her father when her mom died. Dad, a former cop, is a mean drunk who mocks his daughter’s femininity and future prospects.
To pay the bills, she works as a secretary at the Moorehead prison for juvenile boys, and her catty coworkers aren’t much better than pop. That is until a new woman joins the institution as the head of education — Rebecca.Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival Anne Hathaway’s Rebecca is seductive in intellect, personality and looks, and is a wallop of energy for stuffy Moorehead. The Harvard grad is everything meek, dowdy Eileen isn’t — outgoing, recklessly spontaneous, blonde — yet she’s also the one person who’s nice to her. The smitten secretary becomes obsessed with the teacher, and models herself after Rebecca by poshing up her wardrobe and taking up smoking.forbidden-love drama “Carol.”That suspicion is boosted by Eileen’s sexual repression.
Enigmatic Rebecca is sized perfectly by Hathaway, and is believably metropolitan rather than a distracting force of nature. Her realistic persona, although cloaked in mystery, allows for a complex chemistry to form with McKenzie. As they dance together in a local old bar, it’s intoxicating trying to figure out what the hell is up with them.Two other killer performances come from Shea Whigham as Eileen’s cop dad and Marin Ireland as the distraught mom of a teen prisoner.
Oldroyd is as much a star here as any of his actors. Not only does he find scorching heat in suburban winter bleakness, but he also expertly crafts what will be one of the most jaw-dropping 10 seconds of the moviegoing year.
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