Emily Benetto has had enough of America’s bullshit. She’s barely existing in Los Angeles, drowning in student debt to the tune of $70,000 and can’t get a well-paid job because of a felony conviction for assaulting her piece of shit ex-boyfriend. She doesn’t even scrape a living in the gig economy for a catering company as her wages are sucked up into the void of servicing the interest on her loan. All she wanted to do was study art at college and work for an advertising company, now she’s living in a Kafkaesque nightmare where her life is over before it even started.
To make matters worse, Liz, her best friend from Jersey, is reaping the benefits Emily hoped to when they both moved out to the West coast. Liz has the minimalist apartment, the hipster friends, and a job that pays for her to work in Portugal even if it is, “Only for eleven days.” Liz says she’ll hook Emily up with a job, but Emily can see her heart’s not in it.
In contrast, Emily is constantly banished to the room she rents from a young couple who monopolise the rest of their small apartment. Mentally and physically, Emily is permanently trapped, cast adrift in the City of Angels with her wings clipped and a ball and chain clamped around her ankles.
She gets an in as a “dummy shopper” but she’s really on the first rung of a credit card fraud ring. All Emily wants to be is free and experience the world, maybe travel to South America. The choice between drowning in debt and earning decent money is no choice at all and with the help of her handler, Youcef, Emily starts to bring in serious cash. Whether she’s buying flat screen TVs or boosting BMWs, Emily finds her calling, dealing with her fellow marginalised Americans in stolen goods.
If we’re in any doubt that Emily can handle stressful situations, just watch the opening scene where she excoriates a potential employer for tricking her into thinking he doesn’t have her criminal record. She stares him down, the anger she has suppressed for years raging through her system. Aubrey Plaza has those Shelley Duvall eyes but they never radiate fear, only the menace of someone who won’t be fucked over anymore.
Aubrey Plaza has those Shelley Duvall eyes but they never radiate fear, only the menace of someone who won’t be fucked over anymore.
Emily The Criminal shares similar DNA as Ken Loach’s film Sorry We Missed You, also about zero hours contract workers. In that film Ricky, a delivery driver, is forced to continue with the very ‘job’ that is eroding his health, wellbeing, and family relationships. Emily tries to fight back against the ‘friendly fascism” employed by big business and big government in the United States and the West to keep control of the vast profit monopoly capitalism affords them. “Friendly fascism” a term coined by Bertram Gross in his book, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America sums up Emily’s plight.
“We, like the natural world, have become mere commodities in the hands of corporations to exploit until exhaustion or collapse. Elected officials are manufactured personalities and celebrities. We vote based on how we are made to feel about corporate political puppets. The puppets, Democrat and Republican, engage in hollow acts of political theatre keep the fiction of the democratic state alive. There is, however, no national institution left that can accurately be described as democratic. Citizens, rather than participate in power, are permitted virtual opinions to preordained questions, a kind of participatory fascism.”
So, Emily’s vote won’t change a thing. Even President Biden’s student loan forgiveness policy is blocked by vengeful Republicans. She must go it alone in the shadow economy, risking life and liberty to become free from the dominion of debt. Noam Chomsky feared the worst years ago, “Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford time to think.” Did you know that the student loan is the only loan that doesn’t die with you and passes onto your next of kin?
Even the old mantra, “It’s not what you know. It’s who you know” doesn’t work anymore. When Liz’s boss, another Jersey girl made good, offers Emily an internship rather than paid employment, “You do realise this is a very competitive position” she is incredulous, then furious,
“I understand that. What I don’t understand is how you feel so comfortable asking someone to work without pay!”
People like Liz’s boss break the glass ceiling by adhering to the status quo rather than challenging it. In her eyes, Emily should be grateful for the chance and not have the temerity to be so vulgar as to ask to get paid, as she was the “Only woman in a room full of men.”
John Patton Ford’s movie is a timely examination of the crippling effects of American financial system forcing people like Emily to the fringes of society. Aubrey Plaza, as with her social media obsessed turn in Ingrid Goes West, once again shows herself to be an electric performer when examining the modern condition. Whether you believe in the final frame that she has become a financial tyrant or saviour is testament to her ferocious talent as an actor of growing repute.