Eileen

  Aptly, this film about the stifling repression by the patriarchy focuses on two women working in a boys’ detention centre. The boys live in a state of fragile repression, which can erupt even in a Christmas show. The female staff snap at their juniors, complicit in the principle of hegemony.  

The drama centers on the power shift between two women who work there, The beautiful new Harvard Psych PhD Rebecca meets, liberates and is eventually overtaken by the mousey submissive functionary Eileen.

When Rebecca breezes into her new job she’s introduced by Old School sexist jokes and dismissal. She initially introduces a new sensitivity in her dealing with the inmates. Also, her interest in Eileen draws the girl out of her repression. But by film’s end, Eileen has grabbed the power and initiative, leaving Rebecca in full retreat. 

Rebecca initially warms Eileen by identifying as a fellow orphan. She has learned aggression as a way to survive in the male world. Thus she cold-cocks a brute in the bar. Eileen is still smothered by her violent drunken father. Denying herself any identity, she restricts her wardrobe to her mother’s old clothes. For sexual release she indulges in masturbatory fantasies at work. 

Eileen’s father is the nightmare patriarch. The former police chief, retired in humiliation, survives as a violent, obsessive, helpless drunk. He disdains of Eileen for lacking the gumption to escape him as his other (unseen) daughter did. That’s the no-win ethos of the patriarchy. You lose if you serve.

The other central male is another cop’s son, jailed for having murdered his father in bed. Enigmatically, he has since refused to speak. Rebecca draws out his secret: His mother condoned his father’s sexual abuse of him. Rebecca dumps her discipline of psychology and invades the mother’s house, intent upon forcing her confession. In taking the woman prisoner Rebecca in effect ruins her own career. 

During that woman’s captivity Eileen shifts from unwitting accomplice to impulsive commandant. On impulse she raises the stakes from kidnapping the mother to killing her. At this unintended extremity the psychologist disappears. We watch Eileen’s escape, as she hitches a ride with a trucker and joins a series of trucks — possibly tricks — hitting the highway. That’s an ironic reassertion of the male power, on the road as in stasis.     

The central women’s relationship begins in kindred spirit, warmth and sensual attraction. It’s shivered by Rebecca’s inappropriately forceful initiative, then broken by Eileen’s impulsive extremity. The patriarch is a prison that defeats anyone who submits to its strategy and hegemony.