by Lisa Nystrom
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jazmin Jones, Olivia McKayla Ross, Shola von Reinhold
Intro:
... fascinating …
Launched in 1987, “Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing” was a software program designed to teach touch typing. It was so popular in schoolrooms, largely across the United States but also internationally, that the face of the program, “Mavis”, became something of an icon.
In this documentary, director Jazmin Jones and her collaborator Olivia McKayla Ross, have set out to do exactly what the title implies: seek out the woman behind Mavis Beacon and learn her story.
Haitian-born Renée L’Espérance worked the perfume counter of a department store before being scouted as the face for Mavis, and while little is known of her before that, her life after the success of the typing program is even more of a mystery. At the time that Jones began her search, 26 years had passed since anyone had heard from L’Espérance.
The mystery itself is somewhat compelling at a glance, but the blend of academic interrogation and exploration of identity with which Jones approaches her subject is what makes this fascinating. Her aptitude for storytelling is evident, ensuring that even when leads don’t pan out or the investigation hits a wall, the audience is equally invested in the day to day lives of the detectives, and the slow pace of the search barely registers. Their nuanced examination of marginalisation, of race, and of gender, delves into the importance of representation in media, an issue as critical in 1987 as it is in our modern society of ever-growing AI dependence.
The film’s fast-switching format is perfectly coded for people with short attention spans, imparting knowledge in YouTube skits, Google pages, and memes, keeping the tone light and engaging even through the heaviest of subject matter. The regularly scheduled side-quests, including taking high tea with writer Shola von Reinhold, and lending a platform to a local rapper, stop things from getting stale, although with a pair of detectives who value cold calling and distributing missing posters on an equal level with more unique methods like prayer circles and spiritual wellness checks, boring was never going to be an option.
