I watched William Oldroyd’s “Eileen” at this past January’s Sundance Film Festival. Although it felt slight at the time, but nevertheless intriguing, it’s stayed with me in the months since.
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’s 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.