DEBT TRAP

Aubrey Plaza shows off her dramatic chops in the titular role in John Patton Ford's nail-biting thriller, Emily The Criminal. Total Film meets the team behind one of the year's most compelling and stressful thrillers.

- LEILA LATIF

In the US, President Biden recently announced that up to $20,000 of student loans would be forgiven, which will make a life-changing impact on many people who have spent their entire adult lives paying huge sums intensified by high interest rates, barely able to keep afloat. But, that impact isn’t life-changing enough for the people whose debts are so large that even a $20,000 reduction will still leave them drowning.

This is the case for the antihero at the heart of Emily The Criminal, in which Aubrey Plaza goes into full thriller mode in the story of a woman pushed to the brink while saddled with $70,000 worth of debt. Writer/director John Patton Ford – here making his debut – drew from his own experience. “I got out of school with a tremendous amount of debt, over a hundred thousand dollars,” he tells Total Film. “Suddenly I had to pay $1,200 a month in loan payments, another $1,100 in rent,” he remembers shaking his head. “So you’re just working 60, 70 hours a week, doing everything you can to survive and trying to pay off this endless thing. It just feels totally hopeless.”

When we meet Emily, a job interview is going badly, and from the moment Plaza is on screen she seems utterly crushed by the weight of the world. That palpable desperation was part of the appeal for the actor/producer, who has been carving out a fascinating filmography since breaking out as April Ludgate in Parks And Recreation. “That’s what I loved about the script, from the first moment she’s already at 11. It was so enticing to play somebody that from the second she’s on screen, she has had enough and is carrying all that baggage.”