I watched William Oldroyd’s “Eileen” at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival. It felt, at times, like a slight story, but nevertheless intrigued me — it’s definitely stayed with me in the months since.
Surprisingly, “Eileen” did not show up at any of the major film festivals this fall. It doesn’t look like it has much awards prospects. That’s fine. It could turn out to be one of the hidden gems of the late fall schedule.
In March, Neon acquired the rights to Oldroyd’s film, which means it’s in very good hands. Now they’ve given it a December 1st release date. Its minimalist, rather vague, style of storytelling will likely not translate into much Oscar attention, but there’s definitely a niche indie arthouse audience for this film.
“Eileen” is an adaptation of Ottessa Moshfegh‘s 2015 novel, has an 87% on Rotten Tomatoes and 75 on Metacritic. The screenplay was actually written by Moshfegh herself with the aide of her husband, Luke Goebel.
“Eileen” stars Anne Hathaway and Thomasin McKenzie and revolves around a woman's friendship with a new co-worker at the prison facility where she works. Then things takes a turn for the sinister. The less you know about this one the better.
Oldroyd's follow-up to his 2017 debut, “Lady Macbeth,” plays like a Patricia Highsmith novel. It’s calm, cool and absolutely nasty in the way it plays out. I’m looking forward to watching this one again. There are a lot of hidden gestures, words and manipulations that are missed the first time around.
I was won over with “Lady Macbeth” when I saw it at TIFF back in 2017, so much so that I decided to interview him that fall. I was also correct in my assessment that we need to “get ready for star-in-the-making Florence Pugh.” It’s a very undervalued film.
Criterion's December lineup has some great additions to the library, but the title that jumped out at me is Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man," which officially joins the Collection on December 8.