Smash hit

“I read Jenny’s script about three years ago,” says Parker during a tea break. “The dialogue is slightly stylised — deliberately so — but it’s remarkably fresh. It’s a sort of Waiting for Godot story where Godot actually turns up. It’s not absolutely clear what the hell is going on but Jenny has such a sharp and unique way of looking at the familiar that I knew if I could get the right cast we’d have a good time.”

I Really Hate My Job features five female stars with Chekhovian back-stories, and awards aplenty. Neve Campbell (Scream) plays a desperate waitress and aspiring actress. Alexandra Maria Lara (Downfall) plays a dreamy barmaid. Oana Pellea is a hard-bitten South American dishwasher. Shirley Henderson is a grumpy chef’s assistant fishing for that elusive book deal. And Anna Maxwell Martin (winner of a Bafta for Bleak House) is the manageress who’s trying to hold all these egos together.

The drama takes place over an afternoon, evening and night in a Jamie Oliver venue of shame. Rats treat the place as though it were a hamster wheel. The five incompetent female staff fall apart at the seams. And Campbell takes her clothes off. I’m not allowed to witness this scene, presumably because it will prejudice future reviews.

The four producers of the film float around the set like football managers at an FA Cup final. The beautiful Alan Greenspan is permanently glued to his mobile phone. The louche Dominic Saville sports a pair of unplugged fighter-pilot headphones. The muscly Matthew Justice reminisces about an evening I’d happily forgotten at a debauched Berlin nightclub called the Kleine Nacht. And Andrew Higgie (Jennifer’s brother) underlines the sheer financial genius of a) being the brother of the author; b) the joy of making a site-specific British film that doesn’t take seven years to make.

What I hadn’t expected was the lopsided “maleness” of the enterprise. The only powerful female voice behind the lens is that of Jennifer Higgie herself. To his credit, Parker seems to defer to her after every shot. The writer wears a black bob, an Australian accent and a refreshing honesty on her sleeve.

“I’m riding two horses down a wrong-way street at the moment,” says Heggie, the erstwhile editor of the art magazine Freize. Heggie trained as a painter. She ended up a critic. Her film comes from an amalgam of deep frustration. Her muses are Louis Malle and My Dinner With André (1981); George Cukor’s bitch fest The Women (1939); and Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s All About Eve (1950).

“In a sense, everyone in this world is in limbo,” says Heggie. “A twilight zone where they can be artist, actor, or writer. I Really Hate My Job is about how women deal with frustration. Within that there’s a great deal of camaraderie and a shared sense of alienation. Which is why you see the waitresses but you never see the customers. You only see fragments of their bodies, or hear the splintered thoughts of the cast. To me the film is a reversal of that power relationship between the customer and staff.”

And perhaps even director and cast. Henderson has inhabited so many of these pivotal roles that it seems a rudeness to ask whether she grasps the irony. “I like the fact that it feels like a play,” she muses. “Oliver is an actor and he knows what you’re trying to do. The scenes are long and wordy, and there are steep emotional curves. But I feel very comfortable.”

As we wait blinking in the sunlight for the next interminable cue, Alexandra Maria Lara and Anna Maxwell Martin pitch up. Surely there’s no way either of these fragrant actresses have found a way to a real-life kitchen sink. “I have when I was a student,” chirps Martin. “But Alexandra is far too successful in her chosen profession.”

Cue squeals. “That’s what I love about the job,” counters Lara. “It’s being able to try a lot of things you would never try. Probably.”

Has it been intense? “Yes,” Lara says. “Three weeks with five women? It’s exhausting, because everyone has quite strong personalities.” She bats her eyelids over her brown eyes apologetically and wafts off to a photocall.

I Really Hate My Job will be released next year

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