Filmmakers often romanticize their hometowns on screen, but, as Jacques Demy’s vision of Los Angeles in Model Shop shows, sometimes it takes a tourist’s fresh eyes to reveal the beauty that locals miss.

Starting in 2008, a gang of California teens burglarized the rich and famous, making off with their red-carpet gowns and Louis Vuitton luggage. In The Bling Ring, her film about the robberies, Sofia Coppola exhibits a surprising—and disappointing—lack of sympathy for the underdogs.

Travelers heading to notoriously unsafe places are urged to be overly cautious, but such circumspection can force us to ignore basic facts of life about the places we visit.