Clockwatchers

Having worked alongside office temps for many years, I can truthfully say I'd rather squeegee windshields at stoplights than share these poor wretches' netherlife of thankless, anonymous conditional employment. Jill Sprecher's first film contains so much grimly accurate detail about the low-level contract worker's lot that I have to believe she's spent her share of time in that particular absurdist hell. The story, co-written by Sprecher and her sister, Karen, centers on four young women toiling in the cube farm of a large credit bureau. Sitting at absent co-workers' desks and regarded by “permanents” as ambulatory office equipment, their moments of greatest emotional intensity come from trying to wheedle extra staples from the stingy putz who guards the supply cabinet. Iris (Collette, who played the title role in Muriel's Wedding) is the new girl, a wimpy nonentity who's largely content to suffer in silence. Posey is the brash, subversive ruckus-raiser, Margaret. It's a truly surprising -- and impressive -- turn by Posey, who's found exactly the right role to break the pert ingénue mold that was starting to harden around her. Jane (Ubach, from Denise Calls Up) is engaged to be married and giddy about the prospect of escape. Paula (Kudrow) is still looking for a man -- so avidly that she'll resort to sabotaging copiers so she can flirt with the repair guys. The four bond right away and soon are hooking up for happy hour. It doesn't take long, though, for their bonhomie to suffocate inside the Orwellian paranoia of the modern workplace. Nickel-and-dime junk starts disappearing from desks all over the building and suspicion naturally focuses on the temps. Under the stress of abusive security measures, including cameras trained on their desks, they start to crack, openly wondering if one of their number is the thief or a management snitch. Clockwatchers is often disturbingly brilliant in evoking both the look and oppressive sociology of office life. The lingo, personality types, and coping behaviors are precisely observed, though exaggerated for satiric impact. In its quiet, unsensational way, this is one of the angriest and most politically charged movies I've seen in a while. For all its on-target humor, it seethes with moral fury at both the corporate beast and our acquiescence to its will. Sprecher dulls the potential impact of her work, however, by occasionally resorting to pat characterizations -- especially Collette's mousy Iris, who's decidedly similar to the role she played in Muriel's Wedding. And as effective as Kudrow is as Paula, Sprecher might have been better off casting someone who isn't so closely identified with bimboesque characters. I consider these fairly minor faults. Clockwatchers may not be a Grapes of Wrath for the Nineties, but its intelligence, slow-boil outrage over grunt workers' dehumanization, and subtle assertion of their power to resist make it a terrific piece of pro-labor propaganda. Somewhere in the great beyond, Sam Gompers and Eugene Debs are smiling and swapping high fives.