Some will compare this movie to "Psycho" and while it borrows some elements, it is a quite different story. Some reviews have the movie set in the 1950s, and that is what I first thought, but the car he drives looks like a mid-1960s to early 1970s Chevy.
Cillian Murphy is John Skillpa, lives alone, works in a bank, and has a very tightly scheduled routine. To say he is obsessive-compulsive is to greatly understate his situation. He has a very rigid conversational tone and seldom looks anyone in the eye. In quick flashbacks as the movie begins we see a somewhat troubled childhood, perhaps even child-abuse at the hands of his mother, who died only a year ago.
But we also see Emma Skillpa, living alone there. "She" is also played by Cillian Murphy. Emma cooks breakfast each morning, puts a plate over it, then goes upstairs, then at precisely 8:15AM John comes down to eat and go to work. Emma wears a dark wig, makeup, and a long dress but only comes out into the back yard to hang laundry, and no one else has ever seen her. Until a train caboose derails and crashes into the back yard. Then she is required to confront the public and a soft-spoken, self-assured woman emerges.
Ellen Page is Maggie, a local young lady with a young son, wanting to get out of Peacock, Nebraska. Susan Sarandon is Fanny Crill, activist and wife of the mayor. Keith Carradine is her husband, Mayor Ray Crill. Josh Lucas is police Officer Tom McGonigle. And Bill Pullman is John's supervisor at work, Edmund French.
The story gets complex and you never really know where it is going next. The best reason to see it is for the performance of Cillian Murphy as both John and Emma.
MAJOR SPOILERS: John and Emma are the same person, but with two distinctly different personalities and motives. They don't appear to know what the other is going to do, or has just done in that guise. Emma is apparently John channeling his dead mother. It turns out that Maggie's son is John's, a product of a wild night facilitated by John's mother two years earlier, probably in her own madness as a way to get John "to be a man." Emma fakes John's death, and is set up to try to adopt the boy, but she (he) realizes that the boy is not safe, he might meet the same fate that John did growing up, so Emma gives Maggie money and a ride to get her and the boy out of town and with relatives.
Cillian Murphy is John Skillpa, lives alone, works in a bank, and has a very tightly scheduled routine. To say he is obsessive-compulsive is to greatly understate his situation. He has a very rigid conversational tone and seldom looks anyone in the eye. In quick flashbacks as the movie begins we see a somewhat troubled childhood, perhaps even child-abuse at the hands of his mother, who died only a year ago.
But we also see Emma Skillpa, living alone there. "She" is also played by Cillian Murphy. Emma cooks breakfast each morning, puts a plate over it, then goes upstairs, then at precisely 8:15AM John comes down to eat and go to work. Emma wears a dark wig, makeup, and a long dress but only comes out into the back yard to hang laundry, and no one else has ever seen her. Until a train caboose derails and crashes into the back yard. Then she is required to confront the public and a soft-spoken, self-assured woman emerges.
Ellen Page is Maggie, a local young lady with a young son, wanting to get out of Peacock, Nebraska. Susan Sarandon is Fanny Crill, activist and wife of the mayor. Keith Carradine is her husband, Mayor Ray Crill. Josh Lucas is police Officer Tom McGonigle. And Bill Pullman is John's supervisor at work, Edmund French.
The story gets complex and you never really know where it is going next. The best reason to see it is for the performance of Cillian Murphy as both John and Emma.
MAJOR SPOILERS: John and Emma are the same person, but with two distinctly different personalities and motives. They don't appear to know what the other is going to do, or has just done in that guise. Emma is apparently John channeling his dead mother. It turns out that Maggie's son is John's, a product of a wild night facilitated by John's mother two years earlier, probably in her own madness as a way to get John "to be a man." Emma fakes John's death, and is set up to try to adopt the boy, but she (he) realizes that the boy is not safe, he might meet the same fate that John did growing up, so Emma gives Maggie money and a ride to get her and the boy out of town and with relatives.