Rooftop Films: The Pleasure of Being Robbed (Event Over)

Friday, September 19, 2008

The Pleasure of Being Robbed
A curious and lost Eleonore looks for something everywhere, even in the bags of strangers who find themselves sadly smiling only after she's left their lives.

Venue: On the roof of the Open Road Rooftop
Address: 350 Grand Street @ Essex (Lower East Side, Manhattan)
Directions: F/J/M/Z to Essex / Delancey
Rain: In the event of rain the show will be held indoors at the same location
8:30PM: Sound Fix presents live music
9:00PM: Films
11:00 PM: After Party--Open Bar at Fontana’s (105 Eldridge St @ Grand) Courtesy of Radeberger Pilsner
Admission: $9 on http://going.com
Preview: See short films from this and other programs at www.IFC.com
Presented in partnership with: IFC Films, The Independent Feature Project, IFC.com, New York magazine, Open Road New York and New Design High School

PROGRAM NOTES:
The Pleasure of Being Robbed (Josh Safdie | New York, NY | 1:11:00)
The pleasure of The Pleasure of Being Robbed is the joy of discovering a bag full of kittens (and watching them playfully flip through the air); the bliss of an unexpected overnight road trip with a friend; the warmth of a frolic with a polar bear. Josh Safdie's film is filled with a carefree awkwardness, a lightness of touch with melancholy and humor, and a whole host of unexpected stolen delights. Rooftop screened Safdie's short film The Back of Her Head in August of 2007, and selections from Red Bucket Films' Buttons on June 27 and August 2, 2008; his debut feature carries the emotions, ideas and spirit of his short films to a brilliant pinnacle.

The film follows a young lady (co-writer Eleonore Hendricks) as she drifts through life with the naïve charm of curious puppy, who takes whatever she wants, and with the detachment of an adorable kitten, who cares not a fig what you think of her. But Eleonore is neither greedy nor simple. She is constantly stealing, but does so exuding a joy in sharing objects, stories, lives. She steals with a hug, with a shared joke, with a helping hand. The real world does intrude on her beatific kleptomania, and one doesn't get the sense that people always understand and appreciate what she does, but as Safdie says, the people from whom she steals "owe her their thanks." Safdie, who also gives a delightfully quirky performance in the film, compares the feeling he got as a kid when he would steal to that of being in love, and being compelled to do irrational, illicit things for your lover.

Amazingly, the film itself was somewhat stolen. The filmmakers were commissioned to make a commercial, but instead used the equipment to make this gorgeous film, reminiscent of the best of the free-wheeling late-60s / early-70s American cinema. And like those films, the power of Pleasure doesn't come from a tightly twisting plot or singularly-focused characters. The film's drama flips from moment to moment, as Eleonore's interactions dash from ping-pong players to bar-hoppers to police officers, each interaction providing its own arc of anticipation and transformation in consistently unexpected ways. Although no one scene has the feeling of a climax, where everything is on the line, the entire film has the carnival-esque tension of a circus act, where at any moment the easy-going juggling and balancing and dancing with bears could come crashing down.

It's tempting to psychoanalyze Eleonore's character, to attempt to explain her compulsions by way of a mental disorder. Her performance has enough nuance—from giddy exuberance to bitter frustration to dreamy abandon—that the material is there for a diagnosis. But one of the great liberating thrills of The Pleasure of Being Robbed is the sense of weightlessness displayed by the main characters themselves—the willingness to drift from bicycle to stolen car, from New York to Boston—without clear motivations. That Josh takes Eleonore to a bed where he has rigged the sheets to fly away on a pulley is an apt metaphor for the fluttering nature of their flirtation. "If mental illness is doing whatever you want all the time," Safdie said, "then yes, I'll celebrate that."

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The filmmakers and cast will be in attendance.

See the film again, and tell your friends to go: The Pleasure of Being Robbed plays the IFC Center starting at the end of September.