It’s becoming obvious thatAubrey Plaza可以做no wrong. If she does a comedy,she’s hilarious, and if she does a drama, it’s inflected with just a touch of humor that makes it more interesting. She is practically her own genre, and for a few years now, she has been one of the best reasons to go to the movies.
Her new film, “Emily the Criminal,” is particularly strong, in that it combines the seriousness and psychological penetration of an indie film with the gut-level thrills of commercial entertainment. And it’s not stretched out like most commercial features. It gets in and back out in a packed 93 minutes.
This is the first feature from writer-director John Patton Ford, and it’s more than a calling card. It’s a mike drop. This guy can make movies.
Yet one wonders how Ford would have cast the lead role had Plaza been unavailable. “Emily the Criminal” is the story of a youngish woman who works in a low-paying job and is suffocating under $70,000 in student debt. The script is strong and would have made a good movie with anyone in the lead, but Plaza brings a couple of things to the table that are uniquely hers.
It’s a special quality: When you see Plaza, it’s like you’re seeing a whole generation. In style and attitude, she embodies something, not universal, but distinctly Millennial. Put Alison Brie or someone equally capable in the same role, and we’d watch thinking, “Wow, Emily really needs money.” With Plaza, we think that, too, but also sense that this is a generational problem, a very 2022 predicament.
The other quality that Plaza has just coming through the door is that it’s easy to believe her doinganything. We believe when she’s meek and conciliatory, but if she leaped across a table and strangled somebody in the very next moment, we’d believe that, too. The only preamble she’d need is a little flicker of hostility to cross her eyes. This becomes important in “Emily the Criminal,” because it’s the portrait of someone driven to extremes who starts to find her footing within those extremes.
As the movie begins, Emily is working for a food delivery service. It speaks well of the writer-director that he doesn’t do the easy reach of having Emily’s customers be mean to her. (People tend to be happy when food gets delivered, and they’re usually grateful to the driver.) Emily’s problem with the job is simply that it’s hard work and doesn’t pay enough.
One day, a colleague puts her on to a fast way to make $200 in one hour. She goes to an address and meets up with Youcef (Theo Rossi), who is running a large credit card scamming operation. Just the details are fascinating — scores of cards, scores of employees, making scores of purchases, which are then sold. We think of stolen items as falling off a truck. Here, nothing falls, and there’s no truck.
From that point on, “Emily the Criminal” is a succession of stressful, consequential scenes. It’s a crime movie, but as the title suggests, it’s a personality study, a detailed one that grows in dimension. It’s fascinating to watch Plaza fill in those details. Her face is almost blank, butonlyalmost. We always know what she’s thinking.
N“Emily the Criminal”:Drama. Starring Aubrey Plaza and Theo Rossi. Directed by John Patton Ford. (R. 93 minutes.) In theaters starting Friday, Aug. 12.