Amy has problems with her communication service providers and is obsessively and desperately trying to solve them through customer service; a customer service that however seems to be inefficient in its actions. But Amy is decided to insist until a supervisor will take care of her problem if no one else is capable of doing it.
Eric Simonson’s film ‘We Know You Have a Choice’ gets you right in the middle of the main character’s frustration. The director successfully follows Amy’s frustration of dealing with the same reported problem over and over again turning into anger and revolt. But the characterisation of Amy – through the clothes she wears, the house she lives in, the way she likes to be referred at, the way she wears her hair – gives us a lot of clues about her personality: and taking a wild guess we’d say she is the archetype of the single woman, with a successful career on which loneliness is starting to heavily press as a burden and is no longer looked at as an obstacle in front of self accomplishment.
Her social and professional status is making her ask for respect and decency from others around her but is also altering her perception, making her exaggerate things and reflect her frustrations in others. So every time Amy gets angry on the phone she is actually getting angry on her projection in the mirror.
The director doesn’t stop with his analysis of the archetype he chose, while Amy’s problem is easily and politely solved by a supervisor. Her frustrated attitude is no longer reflected back to her but rather absorbed and scattered. The reflection that reaches her back is in fact the reflection of her acute need: ‘unconflictual’ interaction, affection, attraction. This film’s learnings finds its roots in the fine nuances of Amy’s temper analysed by director Eric Simonson.
After all this the title – making an allusion to Amy’s threatenings to change the service provider – seemed pretty amusing to us. All in all we very much appreciated the psychological pertinence and consistency of Eric Simonson’s character.
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