Emily the Criminal
Anything she does is the wrong thing, any answer she gives is the wrong answer: if she lies in the interview about her criminal conviction, they find out about it in the background check and she doesn’t get the job, but if she tells the truth she won’t get the job anyway despite being demonstrably dedicated and capable, diligently showing up for her low-wage gig in catering where she has no say over her hours and watches as her friends get ahead when all she has to show for her degree is a mountain of debt she can never clear.
All reasonable avenues closed to her, no way to ever become the artist she wanted to be, reduced to sketching in the sparse personal time she has, when she gets offered a chance to make fast money by acting as a “dummy shopper,” purchasing high value goods for a third party with stolen credit card details, what does she realistically have to lose? And so, without looking back, Emily Benetto becomes Emily the Criminal.
Written and directed by John Patton Ford, Emily the Criminal is produced by The Little Hours’ Aubrey Plaza who also stars as Emily: she doesn’t actively court the life of a criminal, but with few opportunities available to her when one is presented, relatively low risk for greater reward than is offered by the equivalent time at her hellish day job, the veneer of a supposed morality which has only ever punished her is little impediment.
Once in, there is no simple way out; the risks become bigger but so does the reward, Emily taken under the dubious wing of her contact Youcef Haddad (Army of the Dead’s Theo Rossi) and caught in the aspirational nihilism; both dreaming of a better life, she wishing for the step up which will allow her to compete on equal terms, he wants a comfortable home for his immigrant mother, but there is no honour among thieves and little among family.
A disillusioned wheel in the machine of capitalism cursed by a permanent record, Plaza is both sympathetic, relatable in her frustration and indignation at the rebuttals she receives from her attempts to make it in the “straight” world, and frightening in the lengths she will go to when she crosses the line to the other side, but inexperienced she is sloppy and her mistakes endanger the whole operation, exacerbating Youcef’s relationship with his already distrusting cousin Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori).
A chameleon who has already reinvented herself, Emily the Artist to Emily the Con Artist, now working in a medium where restraint and playing nice to get along will no longer serve her, how far will she allow Emily the Criminal to dominate in order to get what she wants? Inevitably, as with so much of her life, the answer may not be down to her choices and preferences but the actions of those around her who wield the power but who have also underestimated her desire to break free and be more than a faceless drone.
Emily the Criminal is available now on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download
