There’s just enough detail in The Pleasure of Being Robbed to push its meandering protagonist from point A to B while keeping the audience interested and not openly criticizing the chain of events. Eleonore wanders from one experience to the next, like you’re wont to do in so many independent films, taking the possessions of others and reveling in what she learns by perusing their belongings afterward. Despite living moment by moment, her life seems a monotonous shamble of the same daily occurrences with the only unique factor being the things she finds at the bottom of other people’s bags. But things change, eventually.
Even she seems painfully aware of this irregular rut. The narrative makes it very clear early on that Eleonore isn’t homeless, nor that she’s stealing out of necessity. She takes not in order to live but to feel alive; not like the thrill seeking shoplifter who attempts to layer a stolen sweater underneath her jacket, but rather like someone disconnected from others who uses transparent ploys, any excuse at all, to have a conversation with those around her. We see her enter a ping pong tournament only to reveal that she’s clearly incapable of playing on any competitive level (much to the despair of her eager, business-minded competitor (Wayne Chin).
Much like the brief scene proving Eleonore has a home she can afford to live in, we eventually meet Josh (Joshua Safdie), an apparent acquaintance who wants desperately to linger as long as possible in the glow of her life. His obvious infatuation with her freewheeling life leads him to embarrass himself in front of her, teach her to drive, and have her carpool with him to Boston in a car she steals after finding keys in a purse. It’s hard to say whether her trip with Josh is the flashpoint that unhinges Eleonore, but upon returning to New York her habitually cautious means of invasive voyeurism are tossed to the wind in an assumedly unprecedented public raiding in a park that has her arrested. However, even when handcuffed and in the back of a police cruiser, the spirit of independent film can’t be suppressed. The officers on duty are called to a disturbance at the Central Park Zoo and, after she pleads not to be left in the vehicle alone, is somehow given free reign (“You can have 10 minutes”) to go off in the zoo on her own (in handcuffs) to lose her mind briefly in the childish wonder a trip to the zoo brings.
The free spirit ideals of The Pleasure of Being Robbed could have been grating and seemed agonizingly foolish had they not been given so much room. The camera tends to hang back and do little but observe, allowing Eleonore, Josh and others exist as if nothing at all is happening. Those exasperated with independent film’s unending penchant to produce features and characters who live outside any realm of normal existence might not be able to stomach the film’s surprisingly though appropriately brief 71-minute runtime (the feature itself barely even makes it to the 65-minute mark, with the last 6 sacrificed to the god of end-credits and artistic fancy).
Writer-director Joshua Safdie seems the epitome of every grizzled, aspiring filmmaker. His message is unerringly idealistic and his characters so undistracted by any matters of the real world that they’re free to run off and pursue any whim the wind blows into their mind. It’s a wonderful exercise in simple narrative storytelling and Safdie never loses track of the simultaneous forces of loneliness and wonder that drive Eleonore’s daily activities. Eleonore Hendricks embodies a mixture of different emotions and perfectly exhibits that stage of youth where you feel unhindered by the laws of society and can traipse about through reality living any way you choose. For many this sensibility gets lost, and as you watch Eleonore perpetuate it you realize that the mindset might be a necessary loss in order to finally connect with the rest of the world, lest you drift free with no real ties to all else.
DVD Bonus Features
A few short films by Safdie find their way into the extra features section, as does a commentary (decent – though nothing too insightful) and an optional musical track which overlays the film. This might be the most interesting extra of all as the other sound in the film isn’t entirely muted, you can still make out most of the sparse dialogue, but it does extraordinarily well in recreating that isolated, dream-like experience that comes from strapping an iPod to your head and going about your life. Everything gains a new rhythm while cutting you off from a piece of reality. The music was recorded with the film especially in mind, it’s an interesting way to watch the film.
"The Pleasure of Being Robbed" is on sale February 9, 2010 and is rated NR. Drama. Directed by Joshua Safdie. Written by Joshue Safdie, Eleonore Hendricks, Anthony Sperduti, Andy Spade. Starring Joshua Safdie, Eleonore Hendricks.
