Janice Beard [DVD]

Description

Product Description We are introduced to Janice Beard at her ill-starred beginnings. Her father dies of a heart attack during her birth which plunges her mother into a post-natal, post-mortem agoraphobic depression that lasts 23 years. Determined to earn the money for her mother’s treatment, Janice sets off into the work force with no skills or experience with disastrous results. Struggling to win everyone over, she thinks she has found love with the mail room boy but has actually become a pawn in an industrial espionage scheme that could ruin the company. Can little Janice find a cure for her mother, save the company and find true love in the bargain? Anything is possible! .com Janice Beard 45 WPM is a film for anyone who ever swam in the typing pool. It also provides reassurance that anyone who works in an office isn't alone in feeling alone. Scottish Janice (newcomer Eileen Walsh) suffers a never-ending bad hair day while temping at Kendon Motors during a car launch. She's earning pennies for her agoraphobic mother, to whom she sends elaborately staged videos fibbing about her successes in the big world. So simple a life gets complicated by the evil machinations of typing-pool shark Julia (a fantastic Patsy Kensit), and the dangerous allure of office boy Sean (Rhys Ifans sporting the same haircut from Notting Hill). An industrial espionage subplot tugs the light-hearted tone downward only very occasionally. Co-written and directed by first-timer Clare Kilner, on its original release this became a film festival favorite thanks to its dizzy charm (especially Walsh), for seeing the Kensit of Absolute Beginners struggle at a salsa class, and for opening with the line: "My father died in childbirth." --Paul Tonks