Temps

Two young temps imagine what they’ll do when they leave their temporary jobs, and wonder what really goes on upstairs at the mysterious corporation they work for. As their ‘temporary’ situations begin to feel inescapably permanent, Alia and Nora start to rebel, in their own small ways, against the randomness of their fates and the randomness of their economic situations. Have they been putting their faith in ‘bullshit’ things, and can they find a way to put their faith in each other? Alia is painfully open hearted and optimistic. We meet her when she has just moved to London to pursue her career as a singer. She ‘won’t be here for long’ she announces on her first day temping, as she will ‘hopefully’, ‘touch wood’ be famous any day now. But her looming debt, the tedium of the everyday, and loneliness begin to erode Alia’s hope. Her superstitions become compulsive; her fatalism begins to paralyse her. Nora has been temping at the office for longer than Alia, ‘a couple of months’ or ‘maybe a bit longer’, she can’t remember. Nora is leaving soon too, though. She wants to go away, but something is holding her back. She is irritated by Alia’s delusional view of the world and just wants to write her post-it notes in peace. But something about Alia’s hope punctures Nora’s lonely existence, forcing Nora to confront her own secret despair.