Anne Hathaway seduces in thrilling ‘Eileen’

PARK CITY, Utah — No one likes being lied to or manipulated … unless it’s at the movie “Eileen,” which premiered Saturday at the Sundance Film Festival.

Director William Oldroyd’s mouthwatering drama, based on Ottessa Moshfegh’s acclaimed novel, misleads and misdirects all the way to the shocker ending.

Like some dark choose-your-own-adventure story, it’s easy to imagine 10 different outcomes for shy, downtrodden Eileen throughout the shape-shifting film. None of them is what you get. 

Thomasin McKenzie plays the demure 24-year-old title character, who left school and came home to a 1960s Boston suburb to take care of her father when her mom died. Dad, a former cop, is a mean drunk who mocks his daughter’s femininity and future prospects.

To pay the bills, she works as a secretary at the Moorehead prison for boys, and her catty co-workers aren’t much better than Pop. That is until a new woman joins the institution as the head of education — Rebecca.

Anne Hathaway’s Rebecca is seductive in intellect, personality and looks, and is a wallop of energy for stuffy Moorehead. The Harvard grad is everything meek, dowdy Eileen isn’t — outgoing, recklessly spontaneous, blond — yet she’s also the one person who’s nice to her. The smitten secretary becomes obsessed with the teacher, and models herself after Rebecca by poshing up her wardrobe and taking up smoking.

Here is when you start to believe you’re probably watching a New England take on Todd Haynes’ forbidden-love drama “Carol.” Maybe you are, and maybe you aren’t.

That suspicion is boosted by Eileen’s sexual repression. She likes to sit in the prison waiting room and fantasize about a guard ravishing her. 

McKenzie’s soft-spoken and lonely portrayal picks up where her isolated fashion student in “Last Night in Soho” left off, and goes much deeper. Eileen’s daydreams aren’t always so steamy; sometimes she imagines violently killing her father. (Maybe that’s what the movie is about!) As played by McKenzie, we get the distinct impression she’s about to go nuclear.

Enigmatic Rebecca is sized perfectly by Hathaway, and is believably metropolitan rather than a distracting force of nature. Her realistic persona, although cloaked in mystery, allows for a complex chemistry to form with McKenzie. As they dance together in a local old bar, it’s intoxicating trying to figure out what the hell is up with them.

Two other killer performances come from Shea Whigham as Eileen’s cop dad and Marin Ireland as the distraught mom of a teen prisoner. In less capable hands, Whigham’s loathsome father could be a hack-job cartoon. However, while we abhor what he does, the actor helps us grasp his pain. Ireland has a similar task — albeit contextually very different — of finding sympathy in the unfathomable. She succeeds, and the effect is paralyzing.

Oldroyd is as much a star here as any of his actors. Not only does he find scorching heat in suburban winter bleakness, but he also expertly crafts what will be one of the most jaw-dropping 10 seconds of the moviegoing year.