Loss Prevention

Loss Prevention combines documentary and fiction to tell the story of Irene, arrested at the age of 79 for stealing a bottle of aspirin from a Miami Wal-Mart and sentenced to ten weeks of Senior Citizen Shoplifting Prevention School. Narrated through the voice of her daughter, this film explores the alienation of aging and the evolving relationship between a daughter and an elderly mother. The visual material combines the lush Florida landscape with intimate super-8 footage to create a subtle meditation on the conflicts of parent and child, boredom and pleasure, accident and intention, authority and subterfuge.

The interviews, originally recorded for broadcast on the radio program This American Life in July 1999, were audio-only interviews to protect the identity of the subjects.

"In this astute psychological portrait, an elderly shoplifter recounts the events surrounding her first arrest, at age 79. Her tale is intercut with that of her daughter, who was a reluctant accomplice as a young child, and who now must squirm as she posts bail. Loss Prevention skilfully locates the roots of the old woman's behaviour in childhood trauma and frustration. Visually arresting and finely edited, it is an economical parable of compulsion and disgrace." —New York Video Festival catalogue (2000)