Emily Turns to Crime

by

Seventy percent of college graduates leave school carrying student loan debt. How heavy the burden? In 2017, some 44 million Americans collectively owed more than $1.4 trillion in student loans. Sixty percent expected to be in their 40s before paying off their loan debts.

Those statistics are the backdrop for writer-director John Patton Ford’s superb debut, Emily the Criminal. Emily (Aubrey Plaza) is a Millennial with a dead-end job and mounting interest payments. Her dreams have been denied in a society that encouraged everyone to dream big. Instead of a career in design, she’s an “independent contractor” working uncertain shifts for low pay, delivering upmarket, catered meals. When she complains, her supervisor mocks her, saying, “You got a union shop steward? If so, call him.” An art school friend tries to find Emily a job at her ad agency. Turns out the only “jobs” available are unpaid internships. The cool factor is supposedly payment enough! Emily’s felony record for assault (against an abusive boyfriend) is an albatross that won’t fly away.

One day she’s tipped about a gig paying $200 for one hour’s work. “You won’t endanger yourself or another person,” explains Youcef (Theo Rossi). “But you’ll have to break the law.”

Enter the other real-life backdrop to this crime drama: identity theft. Emily is tasked with buying a flatscreen TV from a big box store with a fake credit card. She’s armed with a fake California driver’s license if the cashier asks for ID. Emily endures the suspense many of us face while using our own cards—that anxious wait for the word ACCEPTED on the tiny screen.

Youcef runs a criminal ring buying things with counterfeit credit cards and selling them in capitalism’s shadow economy. If his racket is as easy as depicted in the film, we should avoid digital transactions at all costs. Not unlike Emily, Youcef has a dream. The entrepreneurial Millennial, a Lebanese immigrant, hopes to go legit by investing his money in real estate.

Emily is drawn into Youcef’s world step by slippery steps as small jobs escalate into bigger crimes. Emily begins to imagine that her new gig will buy her freedom from debt. But it’s not always easy work. Emily learns that crooks will cheat each other, and despite Youcef’s benign pitch line, violence is inevitable. Youcef is a charmer, and they fall, well, maybe not in love exactly, but into a companionable partnership. The gulf between them is measured by another of her dreams, which include travel to the place from which Youcef’s family had escaped. The situation spins out of control when she gets careless in crime.

Emily the Criminal is a tight-knit film without a wasted second or a false move as it sheds light on the contemporary problem of the educated underemployed in an exploitative economy.

Emily the Criminal is screening at the Downer Theater.