Aubrey Plaza is the stealth weapon actress of our time, one whose name many people know, yet whose presence feels like a surprise every time she shows up. Even if you’d argue that there’s a typical Plaza character — let’s call her an outlandish, nutty loner with zero patience for idiots — if you look closely, no two Plaza performances are alike. One minute she’s a seductress with sultry, hungry eyes; next time she’s a clever Kewpie doll, but not the overly cute kind – more of a win-win type nightmare alley-Carnival in style. With her dry martini timing, she would have been a perfect match for classic 1930s comedic actresses like Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne, although one also wonders what she would have done with a ’70s role of Robert Altman – her looks a bit like Shelley Duvall, and she’s capable of the same wistful vulnerability. In a world where everyone seems desperate for attention, Plaza is the ultimate low-key movie star.
It’s not her could not be glamorous if she wanted to. But why take on a starring role when you could play a delusional stalker, a ball thief holding a box cutter to a man’s throat, a medieval nun constantly at the end of her rope? Plaza favors films that don’t provide easy answers and whose comedy—if any—is of the troubled variety, a mindset reflected in two films opening almost simultaneously this summer. In the drama from writer-director John Patton Ford emily the criminal, Plaza plays a young woman who resorts to credit card fraud to pay off her student loan debt. And in the pleasantly funky comedy turn me around Directed by Jeff Baena, who also wrote the screenplay with the film’s star Alison Brie, Plaza plays the assistant to a scruffy, flirtatious chain restaurant owner (Alessandro Nivola) headquartered in a luxury villa in the Italian countryside — hers Duties also include recruiting playmates for him. turn me around is one of those comedies that has you guessing where it’s going, and while Plaza’s role is small, her trademark eye-rolling is the key to her wacky mind. But in emily the criminal, Aside from a line or two, Plaza’s move isn’t funny at all. All comic book actors hide behind their comedy to some degree, but here Plaza lets the veil drop completely. It’s an unnervingly naked and beautiful performance that cuts straight into the stressful tremors of everyday life, the anxieties most of us feel every day but seldom dare to admit.
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Aubrey Plaza in new thriller Emily the Criminal
Courtesy of Roadside Attractions and Vertical Entertainment
As different as these two roles are, it’s not hard to find their roots in Plaza’s other work. The gossip all around Emily the criminal has hinted that this is her first “serious” role, but the seeds for it were planted at least five years ago in Matt Spicer’s unruly satire Ingrid goes west. Plaza plays Ingrid Thorburn, a deeply unstable young woman who becomes so obsessed with an Instagram influencer, Elizabeth Olsen’s Taylor Sloane, that she moves across the country to Los Angeles to infiltrate her idol’s life. The film moves uncomfortably on the balance beam between comedy and drama: Ingrid is so delusional that it’s hard to laugh at her schemes and missteps, as the plot often dictates. But without Plaza, the film wouldn’t work at all. Her ingenious physical comedy moves pervade the entire film: After buying the very same clutch Taylor wears so casually, she just can’t pull the trick to tucking it neatly under her arm – it slumps away from her like a semi filled sack of flour, a symbol of her own miserable, unmanageable life. When she is finally invited to dinner at Taylor’s house (after bringing back Taylor’s dog, which she herself had previously stolen), she wastes little time looking for opportunities to sniff. “Can I use your bathroom?” she asks with hypermillennial exaggeration, her already wide eyes flashing just the tiniest bit, like a poker player’s almost imperceptible tell.
Plaza in Ingrid Goes West from 2017
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But what is really remembered after watching Ingrid goes west is Plaza’s prickly frankness, her ability to frighten us with Ingrid’s zany motives even as she elicits a fiercely protective instinct in us. Ingrid’s social awkwardness is the opposite of what we’ve come to expect from social media, and Plaza works with that raw truth. Even when she’s directly following Taylor, we can practically see her loneliness floating around her like a steamy aura. This sense of sometimes uncontrollable individuality is also part of Plaza’s comedy. She’s always just a little apart from everyone else. In Maggie Carey’s 2013 glorious comedy the to-do list, Plaza plays a sexually naïve young woman who prepares for her freshman year of college by making a list to help her come to terms with her sexuality. This is totally the wrong way to find out how to do it be, but Plaza makes it both believable and insanely funny. And her first starring role opposite Mark Duplass in Colin Trevorrow’s 2012 time travel romance safety not guaranteed is a miracle: as Darius magazine intern, unable to find her place in life, she transforms a young person’s insecurity into an almost merciless state – a kind of x-ray view of the things that really matter versus those of their worth we have been conditioned.
The biggest frustration of trying to follow the threads of Plaza’s career is that she seems to be working all the time: on the upcoming animated series little demon, She provides the voice of a woman who is the mother of the Antichrist. (Danny DeVito is the father, aka Satan.) And the 2022 portion of Plaza’s resume is just one segment of a long trail. Even before her TV breakthrough parks and recreation, she had small roles in Judd Apatows funny people (2009) and Edgar Wright’s Scott pilgrim vs the world (2010). (All after her stint with the improv comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade.) Her more recent film roles are tricky to categorize: In Lawrence Michael Levine’s semi-comedic psychological thriller black bear (2020) she plays two roles – or maybe it’s just one role – as a filmmaker who has booked a stay at a rustic-luxe lakeside home, and as an uncertain actress who stars in a film set in and around the same house is rotated. The film doesn’t quite work, but Plaza knows exactly how to bridge the blurred lines between reality and performance. And in the underrated brilliance work of 2017 the little hours Adapted from Bocaccio’s Decameron – written and directed by Baena, Plaza’s longtime partner and now husband – Plaza is stunning as a ill-tempered nun, a deranged hell boy in a headscarf.
Franco and Plaza: Adorable Nunsense in ‘The Little Hours’
Gunpowder and Sky
Plaza isn’t the star of The Little Hours: That title goes to Alison Brie, herself a gifted writer and performer, and also the star of turn me around (Brie, Plaza, and Baena have collaborated frequently, one of those rare unions of like-minded souls who all crack the same jokes even as they invite the audience in.) turn me around may be a bit disappointing for Plaza fans: her character Kat leaves the film a little early, but her scenes with Brie as naïve restaurant manager Amber are terrific. In one of these, the pair scurry through the streets of a small Italian town after Kat snags a free meal from a scumbag cook – together, in their sparkling, shiny evening wear, they’re the picture of freedom for girls’ nights out. Moments later, there’s a confused moment of seduction, and while Kat is the instigator, she’s also the one who ends up suffering: the look on her face when she’s rejected is a heady mix of hurt pride and dogged denial. It’s enough to make you wish there could be a whole movie just about these two.
Plaza’s role in Emily the criminal has less odd buoyancy than most of their others. It’s also more haunting than anything she’s done. Emily lives in Los Angeles and works a crippling catering job to pay off her hopeless school debts. A coworker matches her with an outfit that pays people to buy goods with stolen credit cards. Money is so easy that Emily becomes addicted to the show.
The world needs comic actresses a lot more than it needs so-called serious dramatic actresses: doing the work of the comedy – digging into all the things that people are afraid to speak up about –is serious. But that’s exactly the mindset that Plaza seems to be bringing Emily the criminal. This is one of those social movies that works because the circumstances that drive their characters are so easy to buy: why should so many young people carry huge student loan debts in real life? It is only logical that a fictional character would resort to illegal and amoral means to dig himself out. in the emily the criminal, You desperately want Emily to get away with it all, and yet your heart sinks when she does. Playing her, Plaza has fire in her eyes when she fears getting caught. But as Emily racks up one ill-gotten gain after another, that fire gives way to a stunned dullness. That’s something you don’t want to see in Plaza’s eyes – and that’s her gift to us, showing us what we don’t want to see, making us feel what we don’t want to feel. We are on this branch with her and experience the Sensurround feeling when it cracks underneath. That’s what actors do best.
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