I Really Hate My Job

I Really Hate My Job (2007)

** (out of 4)

Five women find themselves working in a London café but each sees themselves as something other than what they're doing. The three waitresses, the cook and the dishwasher all see themselves as trying to be something (an author, a actress, etc.) they might not ever be. This is about as much art as an art-house film can be so an overwhelming majority are probably going to hate this thing. It never got a wide release in America and that's easy to see why as the subject matter and the way it's delivered really isn't going to draw much attention from viewings wanting more bang for their buck. There's a lot to admire about this film and I respect what they were going for but in the end I have to label it a failure. The film really doesn't have a beginning or an ending as we're pretty much thrown into the lives of these five people as their either falling apart or coming together. We hear them talk about their dreams and we hear them talk about their problems. Since we're dropped in the middle of this stuff we never really get anytime to grow with them and for me I never really cared for any of them. The way the film throws us into their lives was a bit mishandled in my opinion because it's almost like this was a sequel to a film that we'd need to see in order to follow the start of this movie. I know this was obviously the point of the filmmakers but for me it took way too much time to get going and by the time it did get going you were already bored and uninterested in what was going on. The actresses give pretty good performances with Alexandra Maria Lara being the main standout. Neve Campbell plays the actress/waitress and her nude scene probably got more attention than anything else in this film. The film and screenplay does a nice job at giving everyone their own identity and the actresses do what they can with the material but in the end the film isn't a complete success and I doubt many are going to stick with it to the end credits.

An excellent theatrical movie about 5 girls working in a restaurant but in fact looking for the meaning of their lives. Great acting on all 5 actresses, 2 of them being Romanian. Composition roles that request creativity and power: Shirley Henderson is a terrific almost hysterical woman and I would give her the Oscar for her performance. Oana Pellea is a delusional older woman, speaking just in philosophical words and behaving like nothing around her is happening; until frustration gets her too! I would like to see this script on stage eventually, and with same casting would be a stunning show. I saw the movie (an absolute world premiere) at TIFF (Transilvania International Film Festival) in Cluj, Romania, and I enjoyed every second of it.

I find the mark on IMDb really low for the quality of the movie. The characters were complex and the acting great. Maybe the problem was that the characters really were too complex. Imagine a classy diner where 5 women try to satisfy the whims of their high-paying customers, while fighting a rat infestation and each having emotional issues to deal with.

It is, by all means, a film for women. Men watching this might not enjoy the endless laments and the emotional way in which the characters deal with their problems. However I find that the roles themselves were well crafted: a boss who seems to employ every annoying management technique in the book and drive her employees insane with difficult requests, but underneath a nice person that fights to reconcile her job with her conscience; an unemployed actress, always acting superior, but underneath feeling that she has failed in her life; a hysterical writer that can't publish her book; a new-age type of girl who lives in the past and tries to fix everybody; a middle aged woman who wants to feel alive again.

This is it. It feels like a play, it has only 5 characters and a guest appearance of Danny Houston, it plays with your emotions, but it really has a more appeal to women than men. Good movie though, and it deserves a higher mark.