'Pleasure of Being Robbed' and 'Frownland' make strange bedfellows

In one, a tousle-haired young woman thieves everything she can get her hands on -- purses, grapes, kittens, a car -- somehow bringing an enigmatic innocence and naive inquisitiveness to her ragamuffin rebellion. In the other, a stammering young man, whose inarticulateness makes him the world's least-likely door-to-door salesman, grapples with his loneliness and isolation from the world. Taken together, "The Pleasure of Being Robbed" and "Frownland" make for the most unusual and compelling (and likely hippest) double feature to hit screens in Los Angeles in quite some time.

On the face of it, the films make for an unlikely double bill, as the sketchbook-doodle whimsy of "Robbed" is in stark opposition to the near-pathological intensity of "Frownland." On closer inspection, the films reveal themselves as intimate character portraits, with a particular attention to the way clothes or cars or apartments externally reflect the interior emotional states of people.

"It always made sense to me, but in an ineffable way," said "Frownland" director Ronald Bronstein of the films' odd pairing. "The movies are . . . almost like two sides of the same coin."

Both films have had unexpected success on the festival circuit. Directed by Josh Safdie, "The Pleasure of Being Robbed" premiered at the 2008 South by Southwest film festival and was subsequently the only American film screened as part of the Directors' Fortnight section at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. Bronstein's film premiered at the 2007 South by Southwest festival, where it won a jury prize, and went on to be nominated for a Spirit Award and to win a Gotham Award.

Though each film has shown on its own in Los Angeles either at a festival or as a one-off event -- and "Robbed" has been available on video-on-demand -- when they screen together at the Cinefamily at the Silent Movie Theatre from Thursday through next Sunday it will be in effect the first significant local theatrical run for either.

Both films take place in and around New York City, though "Robbed" does takes a brief road trip to Boston, as it playfully follows a young woman named Eleonore (played by Eleonore Hendricks as a cross between a silent-film waif and a hipster heroine) as she slides around the margins of society, quietly and subtly pilfering what she needs along the way.