Seems like, for Emily Benetto, the punishment came before the crime. A talented graphic designer, the young woman survives in Los Angeles, where she delivers meals to individuals or businesses. She lives with a roommate and what she earns is barely enough to cover the interest on her student loan. During the job interviews that she continues to pass, after the usual courtesies, a conviction for assault always ends up resurfacing, since potential employers have access to her criminal record.
What John Patton Ford, who directs his first feature film with impressive confidence and economy of means, draws, and Aubrey Plaza, who shapes the character of Emily and also produced the film, are portraits, frescoes and of the thriller. The passage of the outlaw protagonist sometimes evokes the catastrophic trajectories of the characters of the Safdie brothers (Good Time, Uncut Gems), except that the disorder of the New York paroxysms is replaced by a slower mechanism (question of distances, Los Angeles is infinitely larger, and climate, too, immutable) but just as implacable.
Emily crosses over when a helpful co-worker gives her the contact of an employer who can earn her $200 in an afternoon. Appointment made, she discovers an express training session led by Youcef (Theo Rossi), a young man who exudes kindness throughout this initiation to identity theft with credit cards whose numbers have been captured. on the Internet.
It is quite simply a question of buying consumer goods with these payment instruments which, in appearance, present all the guarantees and of bringing them to their sponsor. Emily’s poise, poise and improvisational skills make her an ideal candidate for the job. The screenplay (by John Patton Ford) meticulously details both the criminal technique and the moments when the mechanics seize up. The rigor, on the edge of coldness, of the staging does not prevent adrenaline rushes. In these moments, Aubrey Plaza is forced to let guess what moves her character, an inexhaustible anger against the world that pushes her into a dead end.
Latent violence
Confrontations with clients and suppliers who often try to renege on the terms of the contract respond to Emily’s attempts to finally approach the goal she had initially set for herself: a paid job in a graphic studio. His duet with Alice (Gina Gershon), his best friend’s boss, tears to pieces this system which says that, to practice an interesting profession, it must first be practiced for free.
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