‘Emily the Criminal’ is a Bad Woman
Aubrey Plaza in Emily the Criminal. Credit: Roadside Attractions/Vertical Entertainment
‘Emily is not a good kind of woman. She does not live for anyone but herself. She is selfish and focuses only on her personal gain.’
Aubrey Plaza and Theo Rossi star in the hit film Emily the Criminal (2022), written and directed by John Patton Ford, which follows a college graduate (Plaza) who becomes involved in a credit card scam to pay off her student debt. Premiering at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival, the film has received positive reviews for its thriller undertones and social commentary on wealth and our reliance on conforming to a gig economy.
Emily is not the good kind of woman we are used to seeing in conventional cinema. She does not live for anyone but herself. She is selfish and focuses almost solely on her personal gain. The people in her life do not satisfy her – her roommates seem lovely in their innocuous mundanity, but they are as backgrounded as the furniture in their apartment, and while her friendship with Liz (played by Megalyn Echikunwoke) is good-intentioned, Liz exists to Emily largely as a potential way out of her student loan debt predicament. The two women bond more on professional than emotional levels.
The key relationship in the film is between Emily and Youcef (played Theo Rossi). Emily’s professional relationship with Youcef develops into a role that would conventionally be called her love interest; however, it feels more fitting to call him her professional-slash-sexual interest. Throughout their love affair, they trade flirtations and favours, and at one stage Youcef even asks Emily to meet his mother under the guise that they are, indeed, conventional love interests – she agrees after he emphasises that he’ll ‘owe her one.’ That type of transaction is part of their deal: Emily is Youcef’s credit card scam business protégé. Over the course of their relationship they get comfortable with each other, but never cross the line into real intimacy.
Transaction doesn’t have to be a cold word, does it? It was good while it lasted, that was clear, for both Emily and even more for Youcef. But business is business and Emily’s business is life or death. Life or slavery to debt; life or prison; life without art. When the Youcef deal didn’t work for Emily, she stayed loyal to her own terms, not Youcef’s terms. We see this when she leaves him seriously injured, potentially dying. If she had stayed and been caught for her crimes she would have destroyed her own future. Her ability to exist comfortably in this world, without financial worry and with time for art, was threatened. She chose herself over Youcef. Selfish or selfless?
By the end of the film, Emily saves herself by leaving Youcef, leading some audiences to interpret such an act as terrible. Is it not? After all, he was a wounded man who, after getting into trouble with his family, asked Emily for her full commitment. He became desperate and a beggar for her partnership. His heart was set on her and a future life he imagined for them, and that same heart that was fading out in front of her in their car.
What Emily did in that crucial moment was follow her own voice. She escaped, unbroken and alone to South America. And, as we see as we watch her walk down the tropical hill in her flowing jumpsuit, she is at peace with herself. Emily is not the good kind of woman. She is the best kind of woman. The woman who lives wholly for herself and her pursuits.
This woman who lives for herself and her desires is someone who Iranian filmmaker Naz Riahi searches for in her essay The Unobliged Woman. Riahi imagines a love where the object of her affections ‘isn’t my primary focus, but exist[s] alongside me in love and collaboration.’ But she, although in love, is not experiencing what she wants. Instead, Riahi is ‘half somewhere else, thinking about my own partner, his struggles, how they affect and consume me. My focus is shoddy, my energy for my own work, depleted. At the moment, I am half somewhere else with him, half here writing, and wholly afraid to lose myself.’ This admission is admirable and this is such an easy concept to understand, the taking on of a lover’s burdens, the desire to do it. It’s either instinct or indoctrination, and it doesn’t always feel like a bad thing. But when it interrupts and impedes the life we want, it can be suffocating.
What is Riahi afraid of? What are we afraid of? Was Emily afraid to lose the job opportunities she desperately needed when the interviews didn’t work out? No. Was Emily afraid when her dummy shopper gigs became tense? No. In these situations, she became angry. The only scene in which Emily is afraid is when she has a box cutter against her throat. She admits she is scared, the bad guys leave, and then what happens? She gets angry. But this anger is always productive and keeps her moving. There is nothing worse than an angry woman. Women are supposed to be meek, smile and apologise and be quiet. Emily’s anger makes her a different kind of woman, the kind that has power, knows it, gathers it, and uses it to get what she wants. What some may suggest as selfish, this is the ideal woman for people like Riahi and so many more of us who have dreams that defy the typical role of the good woman.
Let’s be honest, Emily’s absence of fear is unusual. A lot of women can relate to the fear of choosing themselves over others, especially in places like Los Angeles where the film takes place, and where it should be easy since women have more options and certain freedoms there compared to elsewhere in the world. But it’s not at all easy to defy expectations and the tyranny of tradition within families and communities. There are past and present pressures to perform good womanhood regardless of where we are in the world – in our homes and our minds. Whatever the current situations we find ourselves in, there is always a choice to make and it’s between doing what is easy or doing what is difficult. Emily chooses the difficult. She chooses herself. She chooses all of the things she wants for her life that she shares with Youcef while they are getting to know each other better: to pay her loans, to make art, to paint, to travel, to live in another country for a while. To be able to experience things. To be free.
I imagine that Emily in her new South American home leading her new business may, once in a while, think back to how she got there. It started with a text message and a chance meeting with Youcef. Perhaps she pauses upon the memory of Youcef and the brief flare of romance they had. But I imagine it’s only for a moment, without sentimentality, as she goes back to her sketches, and to lead the empire she has built from her desires, from her anger, from her blood and sweat, but not from her tears. Never tears.
JESSICA HERON is a writer living on the Atlantic coast. She studies language, film, and poetry but is interested in everything. You can find out more about her including a full list of publications at jessicaheronpoetry.com and follow her as @signature_trash on social media.