Year: 2012
Genre: Comedy, Adventure, Drama
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Colin Trevorrow
Screenwriter: Derek Connolly
Music: Ryan Miller
Cinematography: Benjamin Kasulke
Editors: Joe Landauer, Franklin Peterson
Cast:
Aubrey Plaza
Mark Duplass
Jake Johnson
Karan Soni
Jenica Bergere
Kristen Bell
Mary Lynn Rajskub
Tony Doupe
Xola Malik
Jeff Garlin
Basil Harris
Rating: 6.3/10
Title: Ingrid Goes West
Year: 2017
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Country: USA
Language: English
Director: Matt Spicer
Screenwriters: Matt Spicer, David Branson Smith
Music: Nick Thorburn, Jonathan Sadoff
Cinematography: Bryce Fortner
Editor: Jack Price
Cast:
Aubrey Plaza
Elizabeth Olsen
O’Shea Jackson Jr.
Wyatt Russell
Billy Magnussen
Pom Klementieff
Rating: 6.8/10
Title: Black Bear
Year: 2020
Genre: Drama, Comedy
Country: USA
Language: English
Director/Screenwriter: Lawrence Michael Levine
Music: Giulio Carmassi, Bryan Scary
Cinematography: Robert Leitzell
Editor: Matthew L. Weiss
Cast:
Aubrey Plaza
Christopher Abbott
Sarah Gadon
Paola Lázaro
Grantham Coleman
Lindsay Burdge
Alexander Koch
Jennifer Kim
Shannon O’Neill
Rating: 6.2/10
Title: Emily the Criminal
Year: 2022
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Country: USA
Language: English, Spanish, Lebanese
Director/Screenwriter: John Patton Ford
Music: Nathan Halpern
Cinematography: Jeff Bierman
Editor: Harrison Atkins
Cast:
Aubrey Plaza
Theo Rossi
Megalyn Echikunwoke
Jonathan Avigdori
Gina Gershon
Bernardo Badillo
John Billingsley
Craig Stark
Sarah Allyn Bauer
Sheila Korsi
Rif Hutton
Rating: 7.3/10
For the past decade, Generation Y-er Aubrey Plaza has inconspicuously earned the title as the new queen of indie cinema in the USA soil, here are a tetralogy of her films that can vouch for her unheralded attainments.
SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED is Colin Trevorrow’s feature debut, it marks Plaza’s first leading role on the big screen, wherein she plays Darius Britt, an intern of at Seattle Magazine, who gets fascinated by Kenneth Calloway (Duplass), a loner who seeks for a companion for time travel.
Like a proxy of audience, Darius approaches Kenneth with a pinch of salt, oscillating between he must have a screw loose and he might hide his time machine somewhere. Plaza’s deadpan acuity, which singles her out as a scene-stealer in TV series PARKS AND RECREATION (2009-2015), is befitting for such a Manic Pixie Dream Girl type. Darius ingratiates herself with Kenneth, listening to his babbling with a semblance of curiosity, unbosoming herself to him so he can let his guard down and reciprocate with his “plan”. In time, Darius finds more commonality with Kennet, both socially inept, romance-challenged, ambition-unfulfilled, naturally they develop a mutual attraction after a zither performance, the only question is, when the chips are down, will she throw in her lot with Kenneth and trust him with her own life?
A film dedicated to slackers, geeks, dorks and weirdos, SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED is a gonzo, chipper, jerry-built small fry that keeps its audience dangling with the much-hyped time-traveling crescendo, if it is head-scratching how come Trevorrow would graduate to direct a heavy-hitter like JURASSIC WORLD (2015), the low-rent FX sequences near the coda might serve as a wee testament.
Five years later, in INGRID GOES WEST, Matt Spicer’s feature debut, Plaza has another target to curry favor with, Ingrid (Plaza) goes mental as a stalker-turned-friend of an Instagram influencer Taylor Sloane (Olsen) in Los Angeles. Footloose and fancy-free, she uses her inheritance money to foot the bill of her new obsession, but what does Ingrid see in Taylor, a narcissistic glamour puss branding a false perfect image?
Once Ingrid maneuvers to become Taylor’s new bestie, their honeymoon period goes swimmingly until a monkey wrench in the works materializes in the person of Nicky (Magnussen larging it broadly with faux-goofiness and sleaziness), Taylor’s life-of-the-party brother, and Ingrid is disconcerted to get wise that she and Taylor’s special connection is not that “special” after all, she is a fungible member in the clique and once her concealed “stalker” motive is disclosed, Ingrid is unceremoniously ghosted by Taylor and co., but she needs a closure vis-à-vis that can put her out of the misery, Ingrid is a lost soul who chases after a castle in the air shamelessly plugged by the omnipresent social media. Mercifully, Spicer’s film is soft-centered enough to conjure up a heart-warming ending for her, an unlikely knight in the shining armor rescues her from her blue funk, it is the usual “you can have a normal life if you pay attention to those who really care for you” boilerplate, and “we are all Ingrid” squad goal, not to mention that live-streaming suicide is such a bane for netizens.
In INGRID GOES WEST, Plaza further proves her worth by balancing comedic chops and confrontational, heart-pouring bravura, Ingrid is a cross section of a generation force-fed and disorientated by a fast-changing, perfection-obsession capitalistic society and loses their footing in reality, fairly calibrated by Spicer’s approachable, dynamic facility and driven by Plaza’s gutsy, prickly performance, the film is a delicacy confected with just right dosage of drama, irony, social critique and some bromides.
Indie practitioner Lawrence Michael Levine’s fourth feature BLACK BEAR regresses back to a filmmaker’s metafiction embroidery, a diptych where Plaza plays a woman named Allison, whose role changes from an interloper to a scorned partner in this two-part psychodrama, with a love triangle in the center.
Allison is a filmmaker in part one, who comes to a sylvan retreat to compose her new script, and finds herself in an awkward situation with the bickering couple Gabe and Blair (Abbott and Gadon), the owners of the lake house she stays and you will never meet a pair of love birds as incompatible as them. Levine’s script achingly constructs consecutive contradictions for Gabe and Blair to relentlessly shoot at each other, it only makes you wonder what they see in each other in the first place? When Allison’s involvement reaches the boiling point, its fallout feels inconsequential.
Part two is the same love triangle, only this round, Gabe and Allison is a couple, he is a director shooting his latest movie in the location, both Allison and Blair are actresses. The knot is in order to push Allison to max out her capacity, Gabe and Blair pretend to have a surreptitious affair. The emotional manipulation works but Allison has a nervous breakdown, until a turnaround not dissimilar to the one in part one that takes the story back to Levine’s metaphysical conceit, and yes, a black bear does crop up out of nowhere, but Levine’s imaginings are banally provocative and his lo-fi stock of trade (grainy quality, intimate camera angle and its filming-within-a-film frenzy, among other things) cannot banish a tang of inward-looking pretension.
That said, BLACK BEAR thrives on the strength of Carmassi and Scary’s disconcertedly cosmic score and Plaza’s outstanding two-fold, Janus-faced performance, enigmatic yet viscerally heartbreaking, she has acquired that gaze which can shoot right into an audience’s heart, you are pwned! On a lesser note, Abbott asserts himself as an adequate foil to Plaza, but Gadon is found lacking in nuances.
EMILY THE CRIMINAL is another feature debut, director John Patton Ford maps out a gripping, sympathetic story about how Emily (Plaza), eking out on gig economy and cannot pay off her student loan due to a felony conviction in the past, chooses to partake in a credit card fraud ring and to what lengths she dares to operate for lucre. It is a failed case of American dream, usurped by an audacious, by-hook-or-by-crook drive that leaves much collateral damage by the wayside, and let’s not forget, credit card is the ultimate emblem of star-spangled consumerism.
Plaza’s Emily is a tough nut to crack, case-hardened by limited opportunity on offer, she puts on an air of nonchalance to dissimulate her disaffection. Kit out with derring-do and audacity, Emily fraternizes with Youcef (Rossi), one of the ringleaders, and more than once, proves that she cannot be taken for granted. She can be subjugated under duress or seems vulnerable in face of violence, but once getting a second wind, she is efficient and decisive enough to exact the payback, Emily is nobody’s doormat, she has enough determination and recklessness can impress any member of the sterner sex, Youcef included.
Once taking a shine to Emily, Youcef’s role modulates into a mentor, a purveyor and eventually a partner-in-crime, however, it is Emily who wears the pants in their relationship, down to the final, tactical home-invading heist. Ford’s script loses some credibility when the story’s third act gets bogged into a familiar genre groove, but for what it is worth, Emily and Youcef’s affection feels genuine albeit what they practice is a shady business, which renders the ending an empowering but also bittersweet sentiment, a few notches higher than INGRID GOES WEST’s candy-striped sanguineness.
Plaza is at her absolute best in EMILY THE CRIMINAL, time has magnanimously gifted her with worldliness, flintiness and perceptiveness which she uses efficaciously to embody Emily, the most reserved, indecipherable role among the four films, and she hogs our attention like a magnet, a magnificent anti-heroine unfettered by restraint and unbowed to mischance. Meanwhile, Rossi complements her with an equally measured tour de force, his Youcef is too prismatic to be a one-note cipher, you almost wish the upshot could’ve been more to his favor. Incidentally, it is smashing to behold Gina Gershon lording it over as an unregenerate advocate of unpaid internship exploitation, Ford absolutely knows how to twist the knife in the wounds, and in the main, the film marks itself as a worthy indie breakout that definitively puts Ford’s name on the map, grander opportunity beckons.
After headlining and toiling in variegated, small budget productions for over a decade, Plaza’s star has been consistently on the rise (a prominent stint in THE WHITE LOTUS series is a big payoff), her props are long overdue, and her chops are as protean and fierce as ever. Dare I say that I have a hunch the harvest season might just be on the horizon? It’s about time to hail to the Queen.
referential entries: Colin Trevorrow’s JURASSIC WORLD (2015, 6.8/10); David Cronenberg’s MAPS TO THE STARS (2014, 7.3/10); Josephine Decker’s THOU WAST MILD AND LOVELY (2014, 6.6/10); Mona Fastvold’s THE WORLD TO COME (2020, 7.6/10).
Cinema Omnivore 