In his feature-length debut, writer-director John Patton Ford helms this thriller about Emily (Aubrey Plaza), a young woman swimming in debt who’s drawn into crime. (93 min.)
Glen Emily works as an independent contractor for a catering company, loading up tin trays of food and driving them to offices, where she sets up lunch for impatient and entitled office workers. It’s menial, dead-end work, and the pay doesn’t even cover the interest on her $70,000 in student loans. She’s trying hard to find a better job, but she’s got a felony on her record that follows her around like a dark cloud. When a coworker gives her a number to call, guaranteeing her $200 for an hour’s work, she agrees and soon takes her first step into crime, using a stolen credit card number and fake ID to “buy” a TV from a big-box store. Youcef (Theo Rossi), who runs the credit card fraud scam, promises her more easy money, and she’s hooked. Emily’s perceived victimhood—being cut out of a better job and mistreated by her catering boss—is all the rationalization she needs to dig deeper into the criminal life. As the dangers increase and her smarts get her out of one situation after another, crime becomes her way to fight life’s unfairness. It’s a tense, gritty story with a protagonist we sympathize with … up to a point. The deeper she goes, the darker she gets.
Anna There really are no winners here. Even though Emily finds some “success” with her new criminal enterprise, she also can’t help but let greed muck it up. Youcef gives her some pretty basic instructions, but when Emily starts to bend the rules, she puts herself, Youcef, and his business partner/cousin at risk. Granted, it sucks to throw $400 toward your student debt only to find out that it didn’t even cover the interest you’ve accrued, but I can’t say that Emily’s quick and dirty way of getting more cash actually ends up helping her pay off anything at all. Instead, it leads to mounting tension and strife. I really like Plaza, and I like that she takes roles that portray monumentally flawed people. Ingrid Goes West comes to mind, a movie where she plays a different but even more off-the-rails character. Emily is grounded in reality, and the grinding every day of her seemingly dreary life is rough. Unfortunately, it seems that the poor decision-making part of her brain has no intention of going anywhere.
Glen Emily’s absolutely a morally flawed character, and operating in the criminal underworld is bound to bring her in contact with other amoral people. The worse these people are to her, the worse she must become to survive. Plaza seems drawn to these roles—people who feel like victims who become the victimizer. She’s great here. Plaza depicts Emily’s aggrieved rage as always bubbling just under the surface, ready to explode out. This is a heck of a debut for writer-director Ford, and Plaza has a producing credit. They’ve created a tight, intense story that will feel especially relevant to recent college grads crushed by debt and underemployed. The only thing missing in this thriller, for me, is a moral lesson. Maybe that’s the point: Morals are social constructs, and life isn’t fair.
Anna It’s pretty clear they weren’t looking to leave the audience with an overall feeling of justice or satisfaction, which is a really bold choice for a filmmaker and one I applaud. Life is messy, and a lot of the time rash decisions made in a pressure cooker lead to some pretty rough results. Plaza’s characters are almost painfully understandable. Desperation breeds poor choices and compromised morals. The fact of the matter is that our survival mode kicks in and takes over—even if that means leaving those we care about in the dust sometimes. Emily is the cat in a bag just clawing and clawing at a way out. I love that this film didn’t attempt to draw itself out for a longer run time—this was a tight and intense 90-minute film, and it stayed attention-grabbing the whole time. Δ
Senior Staff Writer Glen Starkey and freelancer Anna Starkey write Split Screen. Glen compiles listings. Comment at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Aug 18-28, 2022.