An introverted girl works in an office full of extroverts. That's it.
For a while I was enjoying this because I thought it was a profound study of the effects of multiculturalism. The office is so diverse in its staff that evidently everyone has to dumb down their speech and behaviour to the point of childishness to avoid doing or saying anything offensive. The result is an office full of apparent (or actual) simpletons. Listening to their inane banter is excruciating. Any existential comment would have been met with startled silence.
Someone of depth and nuance who finds themselves in that kind of social environment is going to wonder if they have landed on another planet. The girl in the film doesn't even attempt to cope with it by at least pretending to be cheerful in order to reduce the friction. She just carries on digging a deeper hole for herself by making no effort whatsoever so it is hard to feel any pity for her.
The 'boyfriend', we discover, has no work experience at all. Then we learn that he has been married twice! How does that work? It doesn't. The writer, director, producers, and all of the cast and crew apparently never noticed the absurdity of this contradiction. I don't think I've ever seen such shoddy narrative construction in a film.
Later, we discover the retiree woman has been faking cheerfulness - does that imply that underneath all the simple-minded childishness of everyone in the office are deeper, suppressed undercurrents? It's hard to believe it. The simplistic interpretation is actually what it is about. Everyone goes nuts over a box of donuts, and that's actually the way they are and, the film implies, the proper way to be. The boyfriend character, once we have found out something about him, is still an annoying simpleton. The office crowd are happy because the are genuine and open and uncritical; the girl is miserable because she is self-oppressed and perhaps she has actual mental problems anyway, which just makes it less interesting.
The film, being too afraid to delve deeper or be more honest about the world, was in the end as superficial as its characters.
For a while I was enjoying this because I thought it was a profound study of the effects of multiculturalism. The office is so diverse in its staff that evidently everyone has to dumb down their speech and behaviour to the point of childishness to avoid doing or saying anything offensive. The result is an office full of apparent (or actual) simpletons. Listening to their inane banter is excruciating. Any existential comment would have been met with startled silence.
Someone of depth and nuance who finds themselves in that kind of social environment is going to wonder if they have landed on another planet. The girl in the film doesn't even attempt to cope with it by at least pretending to be cheerful in order to reduce the friction. She just carries on digging a deeper hole for herself by making no effort whatsoever so it is hard to feel any pity for her.
The 'boyfriend', we discover, has no work experience at all. Then we learn that he has been married twice! How does that work? It doesn't. The writer, director, producers, and all of the cast and crew apparently never noticed the absurdity of this contradiction. I don't think I've ever seen such shoddy narrative construction in a film.
Later, we discover the retiree woman has been faking cheerfulness - does that imply that underneath all the simple-minded childishness of everyone in the office are deeper, suppressed undercurrents? It's hard to believe it. The simplistic interpretation is actually what it is about. Everyone goes nuts over a box of donuts, and that's actually the way they are and, the film implies, the proper way to be. The boyfriend character, once we have found out something about him, is still an annoying simpleton. The office crowd are happy because the are genuine and open and uncritical; the girl is miserable because she is self-oppressed and perhaps she has actual mental problems anyway, which just makes it less interesting.
The film, being too afraid to delve deeper or be more honest about the world, was in the end as superficial as its characters.
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