William Oldroyd’s debut, 2016’s Lady Macbeth, cannon-shot Florence Pugh towards stardom. A taut, economical period drama, it practically curled itself up at the actor’s feet, happy to warm itself by the fire that burnt in her eyes. Oldroyd’s follow-up, the Sixties-set thriller Eileen, could, at a glance, offer the same to its lead Thomasin McKenzie. But she’s already shown us her knack for this kind of electrically-repressed woman, the mouse with a roar in her stomach, in Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. Instead, the thrill of Eileen lies in how McKenzie plays off the film’s inciting spark, a blonde-bobbed enigma played by Anne Hathaway.
McKenzie’s Eileen is the younger, unloved daughter of an alcoholic ex-cop (Shea Whigham). She works at the local prison, outside Boston, patting down visiting daughters, mothers and wives while she daydreams about young officers slamming her up against the wall for a quick feel. At home, her father cusses out those who were born only to take up space. “That’s you, Eileen”, he makes sure to add. His old gun is still in the house. She could kill him. Or, perhaps, she could kill herself. Eileen’s boredom teeters on a deadly precipice.
