point and counterpoint

Promo poster for My Fake Amer­i­can Accent

My Fake Amer­i­can Accent (2008)
Dirty Kitchen Pro­duc­tions
Direc­tor: Ned Tre­speces
Writer: Ned Tre­speces, Onnah Valera
Star­ring: Mailes Kanapi, Jonathan Neri, Mar­tin de la Paz, Cherry Mae Can­ton, Miro Valera and Tracy Abad
Screen­ing at Robin­sons Gale­ria (IndieCine Cin­ema until June 23, 2009

When a movie about call cen­ter agents made by ex-call cen­ter agents gets screened, what’s an ex-call cen­ter agent got to do? Nat­u­rally, watch it, if only for old times’ sake. Hav­ing long retired from the trenches, I got inter­ested after spot­ting My Fake Amer­i­can Accent on the movie list­ings. You don’t often get to see movies set in call cen­ters, and this one promised to be unique.

True to its promise, Accent does begin with a new­bie agent’s first day at work, mem­o­riz­ing his spiels while doing push-ups and between tooth brushes. The rest of the movie then details the sto­ries of the other mem­bers of his team mates, includ­ing his team leader (Miss Seva), whose is moti­vated by her desire to become the next oper­a­tions man­ager. This moti­va­tion, pit against each team member’s sit­u­a­tion, dri­ves the impe­tus for most of the story’s con­flict; each char­ac­ter has to con­tend with both his/her own per­sonal dilemma and their team leader’s micro­man­age­ment (for exam­ple, two char­ac­ters had to endure a 20-hour shift).

Accord­ing to its own blog, Accent was writ­ten partly by for­mer call cen­ter agents. Actual agents and team lead­ers also assisted in cre­at­ing the script, and on this point the script got every detail cor­rect, although at the point of some­times being super­flu­ous. For exam­ple, the new­bie agents were trained on how to use their Avaya units on their first day; in fact, agents are sup­posed to have received the same train­ing days before they hit the floor. Other than these minor details, Accent per­haps por­trays the call cen­ter scene more accu­rately than any other local film ever did (or at least, as far as I can remem­ber). When we watched the film, most of the laugh­ters came at the scenes “on the floor” (i.e. set at the call cen­ter desks), which would be intel­li­gi­ble only to real call cen­ter agents.

The film, how­ever, strug­gles to weave the character’s dif­fer­ent sto­ries together. Each story, on its own, would make for a com­pelling story, but it appears as if each one was vying for the viewer’s atten­tion, to the point of side­track­ing the main premise of the movie (i.e. Ms. Seva’s quest for the OM posi­tion). Because of this, the entire movie comes across as an anthol­ogy of six related sto­ries, each of which might have received bet­ter treat­ment in a shorter form such as a tele­vi­sion episode.

On a more pos­i­tive note, Accent high­lights the strug­gles of call cen­ter agents. Not often do you see movies where life in the call cen­ter is any­thing but glam­orous (and, let me empha­size, accu­rately).  I think that there is plenty of room for improv­ing the movie tech­ni­cally (cin­e­matog­ra­phy and sound, among oth­ers), but despite its imper­fec­tions Accent pro­vides a good primer for those who are con­sid­er­ing a call cen­ter job. Seri­ously, I’d love to see the look at the President’s face while she watches Accent,what with her obses­sion in mak­ing the Philip­pines the BPO cap­i­tal of the world

RATING: 3 out of 10.