Emily the Criminal (2022 | USA | 95 minutes | John Patton Ford)

It’s not difficult to have sympathy for Emily, the character Aubrey Plaza plays in the great new movie Emily the Criminal. She understands that a person in her circumstances (loaded with debt from student loans for an expensive art school education and a permanent record that includes some legal infractions) has no shot at “the American dream.” Her life has been and will be relegated to demeaning work for low wages and job interviews meant to humiliate rather than inquire about potential fitness for employment. A more affluent friend wants to bring her into the ad agency where she works but that seems like less and less of a good idea as the film progresses. She finds herself saying “I didn’t want to work here anyway!” often and openly contemplates moving from Los Angeles to back with her parents in New Jersey.

When a coworker offers her the chance to make some quick cash, she’s intrigued, and all-in, because she has so few better options. She enters the lucrative, but shady, “dummy shopper” industry. It means she goes into stores and purchases expensive items on stolen credit cards to be later sold on the black market. She doesn’t necessarily see herself as a criminal but as someone doing what needs to be done to survive.

In her criminal enterprising, Emily meets Youcef (Theo Rossi), a Lebanese man who has his own dreams of legitimacy but sees dummy shopping and credit card fraud as steps along the way. They form a romantic bond, but it’s not the basis of the film. The conflicts with Emily’s art school friend or between Theo and his controlling brother Khalil (Jonathan Avigdori) are less important to the story than the massive weight capitalism and meritocracy place on them. I don’t want to sound too much like Noam Chomsky, or, say, Bernie Sanders but this felt like a rare movie that doesn’t circumvent class politics. Throughout the movie, I felt deeply the pain that Emily experiences. Most heist movies I watch, and love, are tense because the stakes are so low. Who cares which rich guy possesses what rare gems? When Emily and Youcef hatch a plan to set themselves up financially for a long time, the stakes were huge and they were real. 

I don’t usually find wisdom in self-help mantras or bumper sticker slogans and the like, but there’s something Emily says that I found somewhat empowering: “Motherfuckers will keep taking from you until you make the goddamn rules for yourself.” Forget “Live, Laugh, Love,” I want that etched on my wall, in my head, memorize it ‘til I’m dead. 

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Emily the Criminal is playing in theaters now.