I Like to Work
Directed by Francesca Comencini
Reviewed by Catherine MacLennan
The title I Like to Work sounds like a joke, but it is not a slacker satire on office life, nor is it about a robot or a workaholic. It is a plea for civility, normality and dignity - a plea that is ignored.
The film opens with management announcing the merger of the company with another firm. This is described as a wonderful event, not unlike the birth of a child. The speeches continue about how the employees must give their best as a part of the "team."
Soon things start to change - for the worse. Some employees are transferred to another branch far away, in the hopes that they will quit. Anna, the main character, the senior person in finance, a person who did not expect that there would be changes, is suddenly removed from her position. She finds out when she comes in and sees someone else sitting at her desk. Then she is singled out to perform jobs that are stupid, useless, humiliating and impossible. One job involves sitting beside a photocopier, asking and noting the name of the person using it, why they are using it, and how many copies they are making. Not only is this monotonous, a waste of time, and humiliating, but she also has to deal with the scorn of her co-workers. In another instance, she has to use a computer, and has to go around the office begging to use a computer because her computer doesn't work or she doesn't have a desk. She just gets stony refusal after stony refusal from her colleagues.
Management then decides to put her in the warehouse to record the duties of the workers and the time it takes to complete them. The workers are outraged that she has been sent down there to spy on them, despite her protests that it was not her choice and she needs a job just like they do. They gang up on her and threaten her to the point where she has to flee from them. At the same time, coworkers throughout the office have been cowardly mimicking the company's bullying tactics by not speaking to her, which further isolates her. They certainly do not help her in any way (the one exception being another worker who was criticized and singled out unfairly). All this affects her home life: her normally loving relationship with her daughter becomes strained, she wakes up in the middle of the night repeatedly, and finally falls into a depression. Assigned another impossible, idiotic task - she catches them in their psycho-bullying deceit, though they try to force her to resign.
Throughout, she wondered, as one might do in an incomprehensible situation, a situation where you are being singled out, if it had something to do with her - if there was something wrong with her. But she figures it out - they wanted to get rid of someone to save profits, and she was the one. These were the tactics they used in hopes of reaching this goal. A happy ending: she fights through the union and wins a settlement (though she no longer has a job there). The clerk hands her the cheque, saying "Well, you finally won." She answers, "If you call that winning." While the film makes the point about the necessity of workers to fight for their rights, it also depicts the human cost and suffering in such situations - not a winning situation. Luckily, she retains her strong relationship with her daughter. Throughout the film there are scenes that show that this character is a person of worth - she is a competent, skilled worker, who simply wanted to do her job; she is a kind and loving mother as well as and attentive daughter to her ailing father. A person who was significant and indispensable in many important ways in society - and a person completely unvalued by her company, who tried to get rid of her in an ugly, abusive way in order to save a few bucks. Nicoletta Braschi is both vulnerable and dignified in the lead role of this important and compassionate film, a hideous story that is probably played out in countless variations in millions of offices.
The Lamp. October 2004