When Ottessa Moshfegh’s novel Eileen was first launched in 2015, she discovered herself having quite a lot of conversations about her “disgusting” title character—a younger girl who works in a boys’ jail in 1964 Massachusetts, and whose bodily capabilities and habits are described in vivid, typically odorous element.
“I felt type of misunderstood quite a lot of the time as a result of Eileen was by no means truly disgusting,” Moshfegh says on a latest Zoom name. “She felt disgusting. She was describing emotions about herself, and all people else type of needed to concentrate on simply how nasty she truly was.”
With the brand new movie model of the sordid story, cowritten by Moshfegh and her accomplice, Luke Goebel, Moshfegh has the possibility to appropriate the document—partially due to the actress taking part in her undervalued heroine, Thomasin McKenzie. “Thomasin is perhaps the least disgusting particular person I’ve ever met,” Moshfegh says. “Completely beautiful and angelic, nearly. And I believe that in itself adjustments the way in which that we see Eileen.”
Eileen, out December 1 in restricted launch within the US, is the primary of Moshfegh’s novels to make it to the large display screen. The movie, directed by William Oldroyd of Woman Macbeth, stars McKenzie because the lowly and lonely determine, who lives with an abusive drunk of a father (Shea Whigham) and falls underneath the spell of the brand new psychiatrist at her work, Rebecca Saint John, alluringly performed by Anne Hathaway in a blonde wig. As Eileen will get nearer to Rebecca, she realizes that the older, extra glamorous girl’s friendship comes with a contingency—one that’s revealed in a surprising climax.
Moshfegh, a literary movie star whose 2018 novel My 12 months of Relaxation and Leisure is ubiquitous on the laps of hip readers within the New York Metropolis subway, has been dipping her toes into the waters of Hollywood. She and Goebel had been employed to work on the screenplay for final 12 months’s Causeway, starring Jennifer Lawrence—however with Eileen, she might actually see the filmmaking course of up shut.
Although Oldroyd had been given a replica of her 2020 novel, Loss of life in Her Fingers, a few widow who falls down an investigatory rabbit gap after discovering an odd be aware, Moshfegh says their preliminary dialog instantly turned to Eileen. “He was the primary and solely particular person to say, ‘I’m obsessed with this character and I see her for precisely who she is,’” she remembers.
There was at all times a cinematic conceit to Eileen. The novel is narrated by an older model of the protagonist, somebody who loves noir and mimics that style in the way in which she tells her story. Onscreen, you’ll be able to see how these homages change into literal from the very first title card, which evokes coloration noir, like 1953’s Niagara.
Moshfegh has discovered it tougher to adapt a few of her different works—the still-in-progress My 12 months of Relaxation and Leisure “must be rewired,” she mentioned. She additionally used that phrase to explain growing a model of McGlue, a homicide thriller novella a few drunken sailor, with All of Us Strangers director Andrew Haigh. That was not the case as she and Goebel tackled Eileen alongside Oldroyd. “There was a type of shared pure intention and respect for the character and for the mission that it by no means felt like a pressure,” she says. “Simply this actually thrilling rediscovery of the character.”
