Spoilers Alert:
A day in the office of a media mogul – with all its inconsistencies, cool decisions and macho behavior that is second to none: In THE ASSISTANT Let’s follow a newcomer to this testosterone-charged business. And you definitely don’t want to swap places with her! We reveal more about this in our review.
One of her tasks sometimes includes brushing off the boss’s wife on the phone.
But the actress Julia Garner, who has so far appeared more in series (“Maniac”) doesn’t automatically assume her role as that of a victim – even if Michael Latham’s precise camera work does (“Strange Colors”) While she tries to push her to the edge of the picture again and again, she usually fights her way into the center. In addition, it is her precise powers of observation that encourage her to engage in a form of rebellion – for example, when she tells an employee of the human resources department (extremely unpleasant: Matthew Macfayden, “The Nutcracker and the Four Realms”) describes her well-founded suspicion that the boss was at that moment meeting a much younger girl who he had booked into a posh hotel for no apparent reason. It is not only thanks to the excellently lifelike dialogues that this scene brilliantly illustrates the entrenched structures within this company (in the end the employee even gives Jane the feeling that she herself is ungrateful and wrong). Above all, this scene shows how Jane herself becomes part of this construct; After all, back then it wasn’t just men who turned a blind eye to Weinstein’s machinations, but also women. However, this does not make Jane an active (fellow) perpetrator. Especially since the largely open ending (the film simply depicts a normal office day from morning to evening) also means that Jane could soon give up her job. She would like it.
Conclusion: “The Assistant” is a precisely observational study of working in a toxic atmosphere that provides enormous insight into the power dynamics behind the scenes in Hollywood. Even without directly showing any attacks.
“The Assistant” is available to stream on iTunes US.
