Eileen (2023, William Oldroyd) (Patreon)

54/100

Spoilers ahoy.

Managed to see this with almost zero foreknowledge (even to the minuscule effect of "there's something that could be spoiled"; I've already necessarily ruined it for you, alas) and so got to experience its WTF gearshift in a pure and thrilling way that made me cackle hard, out of delighted surprise and also because I'd made a note, only perhaps two or three minutes earlier, that read "Way too obvious where we're headed." In truth, Eileen never succeeded in persuading me to give a damn about its title character, whose personality is too flatly stunted to be of much interest; the movie comes to life exclusively via Anne Hathaway's playfully and knowingly anachronistic performance, which does a surprisingly credible job of channeling Rita Hayworth in Gilda by way of Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels. Rebecca's abrupt transformation into a full-blown psycho—revealed with strange, jarring intimacy, such that Eileen has to process what she's just casually been told while simultaneously shutting her libido down from overdrive; poor thing's been sandbagged and rejected in one huskily blurted confession—promises a truly berserk third act, and is probably my favorite single moment* of the movie year 2023. Throw in Marin Ireland, about whom I've been raving since well before most people had heard of her, and it's kind of amazing what a letdown the rest of Eileen nonetheless turns out to be. Hathaway gets neutered, Ireland delivers a virtuoso but painfully overwritten monologue, and Thomasin McKenzie (who needs to stay away from wide-eyed naïfs) just shifts into a different register of flatly stunted. Not at all the crazy U-turn I'd eagerly anticipated. But I got that surge of adrenaline, plus some primo Annie, and that's enough to ensure that my bitter disappointment is tempered with a little warm affection. 

* This is why I make an admittedly vague distinction, in the Skandies, between "scene" and "moment." I'm talking about a few glorious seconds; the scene of which they're a part might run 12 minutes if we include the basement stuff, which we probably should since it's continuous.