Eileen: Infatuation and Manipulation

Eileen hit theaters for a limited release on December 1, 2023, before expanding nationwide a week later. The film tells the story of a young secretary at a boy’s prison in Massachusetts who becomes obsessed with a new coworker. Thomasin Mackenzie and Anne Hathaway star. It is based on the novel by Ottessa Moshfegh and directed by William Oldroyd. 

Critical reviews have been generally positive. The project carried with it a number of complexities — adapting a book to a movie, for starters. And then there is the nature of the book itself. WNUR News was invited to attend an advanced screening and panel with the creators for college journalists in November. Director William Oldroyd spoke about the draw of the story.

WILLIAM OLDROYD: …When I read, Ottessa’s book of Eileen, it stuck out because of this central character of Eileen…I felt like I hadn’t met such an original and interesting, complex, complicated character.

Eileen is certainly complicated.

CAITLIN RILEY: I was expecting something pretty weird. And like, messed up. And I felt like that’s what it was.

That’s Caitlin Riley, a senior studying communication studies. Riley saw the movie at a screening on campus.

RILEY: I think it was definitely shocking and like a good movie to see with other people because we were all gasping and screaming and…a very, like reactionary movie. 

There’s plenty to react to. Eileen’s dull, repetitive life is underscored by a growing discontent. Viewers watch as she fantasizes about having sex in public and of killing herself and her father. And that’s not even mentioning the movie’s twist — which comes like that of a knife. 

SKYE TARSHIS: It is a crazy story. I was having a great time reading it. And when I put it down my reaction was oh, that was that it was pretty messed up. Yeah, it wasn’t my favorite book…but objectively I thought it was good and an interesting character study

That’s Skye Tarshis, a fourth year studying creative writing  rqytgand music. Tarshis has read the book Eileen, but has not yet seen the movie. They said that although the story is disturbing, there’s something gratifying about that provocativeness.

TARSHIS: I think those are maybe desires and traits that we all have and have suppressed to a certain degree, and so to see that as exaggerated and grotesque is also telling. It’s reflecting something back at us even if it’s not 100% accurate.

Eileen is, at its core, a film about desire. Eileen’s growing obsession with her older coworker, Rebecca, teeters between friendship, lust and love, allowing the movie to reach its dramatic peak. In the panel, Moshfegh says that the filmmakers put a lot of care into how this relationship played out.

OTTESSA MOSHFEGH: We were all very interested in the gray area between platonic and romantic, between real and imaginary. There were a lot of blurred lines…It wasn’t a typical love story, where, you know, two people fall in love and then they get together. It was really about infatuation and manipulation.

Riley says she feels the portrayal of the two women was done well

RILEY: It didn’t really feel like it fetishized them, but it felt like the other characters in the movie did. Like that scene where they were dancing in the bar, like out in public and like very kind of intimate, gentle dancing. It kind of felt like the men were more like, ooh, rather than being offended or disgusted by it, so I feel like it just shows that they didn’t really take queer relationships seriously.

Tarshis says that Eileen and Rebecca’s relationship touches on deeper societal beliefs about women and sexuality.

TARSHIS: I think even women who don’t identify as gay are thinking about women’s bodies a lot because of beauty standards…I appreciate that it kind of toes the line between like thinking about women as an object because of patriarchy, beauty standards, etc and also like wanting women sexually and not knowing how to put it into words.

Eileen was Moshfegh’s debut novel, and the first to be made into a film. But Moshfegh owes most of her recent online fame to My Year of Rest and Relaxation, a novel about a similarly disturbed young woman who resolves to sleep for a year with the help of drugs. During the panel, Moshfegh said she has mixed feelings about how her work is received online, especially by young women.

MOSHFEGH: I guess I have two thoughts about it. One is the positive. And that’s…I’m so honored that a younger generation of readers is finding my work and finding it valuable enough to talk about it, over the internet, like, that’s fantastic. I am also extremely scared of the internet, in general… Sometimes I worry about young people and young people who identify with being mentally unwell. And the glamor that is associated with that. 

Riley and Tarshis have both read My Year of Rest and Relaxation. Both also seem to have mixed feelings about this aspect of Moshfegh’s work.

TARSHIS: There is/was a trend of young women, particularly like white, upper middle class women, being like, Oh, well, everything sucks. So let me just smoke my cigarette and look wistfully out the window. But I also think that interpretation might miss the point a little bit, because I think the book is, at least once you get to the end, it’s like against apathy.

RILEY: With Eileen too, the feelings she was feeling are normal, just like the lengths she went to were what most people wouldn’t do…I feel like both stories are relatable to like, the emotions the characters feel, but maybe not the actions that they take.

Eileen is now available to stream on Google Play, Amazon Prime Video, and Youtube. For WNUR News, I’m Allison Rauch