User Reviews

Watch as she makes coffee. Watch as she makes copies. Watch as she sweeps crumbs. Watch as she empties a wastebasket. Watch as she changes travel plans for someone else. Watch as she almost scrambles when the usual driver can't pick her boss up. Watch as she makes more copies. Watch as she heats a TV dinner... every second that it's in the microwave... I wish I was kidding. I've worked on over 60 films and spent a lot of time working in production offices. This has to the absolute dullest film on the subject I've ever seen. The lead appears to have some talent, but she's allowed exactly one note (Okay, maybe one and a half). Watch as she plays that extra half of a note, on an impromptu visit to HR. Watch as she smokes a cigarette after.

Just don't expect anything to happen. Also, seriously, don't watch this.

I didn't know much about this film until mid last week. I ended up attending the show with a Q and A after the movie with writer and director, Kitty Green. Here is a filmmaker who I don't really know anything about but I was already a fan of Julia Garner. I really liked her on The Americans and knew she was going to blow up soon. She is fantastic in this minimalist performance about a timely and important issue that is ever present in modern times.

The film shows the entire day of work of an assistant at an office of a powerful film executive. During her time there, she sees conspicuous activities and young females being brought into the office and given roles after they meet with her boss even during late hours. She starts to realize what is going on and the predatory behavior involved but must deal with being silenced and has to weigh up how important her job is to her. Julia Garner plays Jane, in her most fulfilled role to date.

From the opening frame of the film this is a beautiful visual experience. The film is quiet at times as you watch Jane take care of daily activities in the office. You can put the clues together to find out what is going on in the office and how the women are being sexually exploited. The film never mentions it but this film was definitely inspired by the story of Harvey Weinstein. The breathy voice on the phone calls also is reminiscent of Weinstein. This film is so competently shot throughout the office.

The way Garner emotes through her facial expressions truly tell the story of her internal struggle. The issue is timely and unfortunately something that occurs today. She has to be silenced because there are people that are more powerful than her who disregard her when she comes forward to speak up. This film kind of shows scenarios as to why it might be difficult for people to come forward when they witness something immoral. Garner is fantastic in this film. The Assistant is a fairly succinct film but immensely powerful in its depictions and is definitely one that has talking points.

7.5/10

I love Julia! Fell in love with her during Ozark. Although she played this character well the movie itself just wasn't what it had the potential to be! When I tell you that every single person in the theater went "Wait. What? Its over?!" I am not exaggerating! We all stayed until after the credits were done to discuss and felt it ended way too abruptly and without diving deeper!. Not seeing her boss was fine but we all felt like there was barely a plot! Yes we all understood that the producer was a sleaze-ball but in could have been more in depth. Maybe more of a story about what happened with Little Miss Boise. Very anticlimactic.

A couple of years ago, the movie A GHOST STORY, which was pretty slow-paced anyway, had a lengthy scene in which we basically watched a grieving Rooney Mara sit on her kitchen floor and eat an entire pie. It took her several minutes, and we were left to watch her going through a well of emotions while eating this pie...all in one long shot. It was both amazing and a bit maddening. Movies don't do that!

THE ASSISTANT feels like it's doing this for its entire run time! I'm sure I've sat through slower movies, but I can't remember when. If you aren't interested in watching mostly the internal life of one low level executive assistant at a movie production company go through just one work day, doing mostly mundane tasks...stay away. Basically we see this young lady arrive at work before anyone else, do dull things like start the coffee, take phone calls and low level "joking" comments from folks just very slightly higher on the chain than her, and have her day enlivened by random calls from the "boss" (no doubt meant to be a stand-in for Harvey Weinstein...although we never see this man) who yells at her and demeans her. Sometimes she gets to run chores outside the office, including escorting a new young prospect to a hotel where she is clearly going to have an assignation with the aforementioned boss. There are other events that occur, but in short, the movie tries to immerse us in an office environment that is very male-heavy, and clearly has lots of things going on that would send most HR departments screaming into the night, but are tolerated because they are committed by the iron-fisted, terrifying boss who is powerful and can control careers with a phone call. We see the slow grinding down of this assistant...she's not a direct victim of abuse, but never has a movie done a better job of showing how a work CULTURE can impact everyone. We see this quiet young lady and the burden her knowledge and conditions have created.

There is a scene just past the midpoint where she finally has had enough and goes to HR to complain. That scene, with the seemingly sympathetic but ultimately slimy HR person (Matthew MacFayden...hard to believe this guy once played Mr. Darcy!), is remarkably powerful. It's really the first scene that isn't primarily just our experience with the assistant, which I'm sure makes it more impactful...but this 5 minutes makes the movie as a whole worthwhile. It demonstrates the dangers of "speaking up" and the insidiousness of a culture where even those who are supposed to protect the employees have been twisted to do just the opposite.

In the end, what makes this movie bearable is the fact that the amazing Julia Garner (OZARK) is the star. Her character in Ozark is loud, brash, foul-mouthed and not afraid of much. Here, she's quiet and cowed. All her emotion is kept beneath the surface, but it's a true pleasure to watch how much Garner can convey by doing almost nothing. Watching her eat a sandwich at the deli, with scarcely a change of expression, she somehow renders powerful and resonant. This movie required a particularly committed and intelligent performance, and Garner really delivers.

It's a tough movie, even so, and although I consider myself a very patient movie-goer, I still was tempted to shout "Please let something happen!!!". But I think it's an important film and it's approach to its subject is both infuriating and very brave. I think it's certainly worth a look...even just to see Garner in action.

I refuse to follow "the pack" on this one... I thought it was great. It manages to make the mundane incredibly tense. This is this first (semi-)fictional feature from documentary-maker Kitty Green.... and in my book she does a knock-out job.

We first meet Jane (Julia Garner) at 'God-knows-what-o-clock' in the morning as she arrives at her workplace - a New York film-production company. First to arrive every morning, she turns on the lights, turns on the screens, makes the pot of coffee and cleans off stains from her boss's couch. The stain isn't coffee. A lost gold bracelet is recovered.

For we are in a truly toxic working environment here. 'The boss' - clearly modelled on Harvey Weinstein - is a bullying tyrant who can reduce Jane and her two male assistants (Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins) to quivering wrecks. "WHAT DID YOU SAY TO HER" barks the boss down the phone at Jane, after she has had a perfectly reasonable phone conversation with the estranged Mrs Boss.

The toxicity is pervasive though throughout Miram..., sorry...., 'the company'. Jane is almost invisible to her other co-workers who don't give her eye-contact even when she's talking to them and barely register her presence when sharing a lift.

But bullying and workplace toxicity is just part of this story. A steady stream of starlets arrive in the office, like meat deliveries to a butcher. In a chilling sequence, the photocopier churns out photos of beautiful actresses.... a paper-based equivalent of swiping-left or -right in the selection process. None of the "if you... I will" discussions are shown, but they don't need to be: the inference is clear.

Jane is smart, slim and pretty... but not in an obvious 'Hollywood way'. "You'll be OK..." says a co-worker "you're not his type".

But someone who distinctly is "his type" is Sienna (Kristine Froseth), a "very very young" aspiring waitress-come-actress from Boise, who suddenly and unexpectedly arrives as a "new assistant"... to be promptly put up in a swanky hotel room. It's time to act... and Jane approaches the company HR manager (Matthew Macfadyen)....

An old Spielberg trick is to increase tension by keeping the "monster" hidden from view: cue the tanker driver from "Duel" and (for most of the film) the shark from "Jaws". Here, the boss is felt only as a malevolent force and never seen on screen. It's an approach that works brilliantly, focusing the emotion on the effect he has on those flamed.

There is also recognition that these powerful people are also hugely intelligent and manipulative. Seeing that Jane is a valuable asset, the public berating is sometimes followed up with a private email apology.... dripping a few words of encouragement and praise like a few drops of Methadone to a drug-addict.

This is an excellent movie and thoughtfully and elegantly directed. Following a normal day in Jane's work life.... albeit a day where perhaps the penny finally drops... is immersive and engaging. And at only 88 minutes long, the movie never outstays its welcome.

The performances are first rate. Julia Garner is magnificent, and in a year where the Oscars will be "interesting", here's a good candidate for Best Actress I would suggest if not Best Picture. Garner's an actress I'm unfamiliar with: the only one of her previous flicks I've seen was Sin City 2.

Also oily and impressive is Matthew Macfadyen as the HR manager. There's also a sparse but well-used score by Tamar-kali.

The one area I found poor was in the sound design. It's clearly filmed in an office environment, rather than on a sound stage, and unfortunately the combination of the acoustics and the New York accents makes some of the dialogue really difficult to hear. An example is a discussion between two co-workers in an office kitchen, which was completely indecipherable for me.

Should I watch this? In my view, definitely, yes. It's chilling and an insight into the terrible ordeal that many professional women in the film industry, and other industries, have had to put up with before the "Me Too" lid was blown off (and many probably still do). The most telling line in the film? At the end of the "Thanks" in the end-titles: "All those who shared their experiences".

I wouldn't have heard about this film if it wasn't for the latest edition of the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, so obviously I became interested in watching it. Basically, Jane (Julia Garner) has been working as a junior assistant at a film production company in New York City for five weeks. Jane arrives early in the morning and performs various menial administrative tasks. This includes endless paperwork, bringing coffees, letters, and paperwork to others, and answering phone call complaints and enquiries. She is constantly busy with long hours and demanding tasks, causing her incredible stress. One day, she receives a call from her mother (Heather MacRae) reminding her that she forgot to call her father (Mark Jacoby) for his birthday. As the day goes on, Jane becomes suspicious of the company boss, referred to only as "he" or "him", who has been making sexual advances to many younger women at the office, and a culture of sexual harassment has been facilitated at the company. Many of the male executives make snide comments about the boss's affairs while the female workers handle their own work and talk about possibly transferring to other departments. Whenever Jane does something wrong, according to her boss, he verbally abuses her over the phone while he two male junior assistant co-workers (Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins) watch in silence. Throughout the day, various people from the boss's personal life interact with Jane, including his wife (Stéphanye Dussud), his children's nanny, and a group of Chinese film producers. Besides her stressful job, Jane has ambitions to become an actress, and attends script readings and auditions, and has occasional encounters with famous actors (including a cameo from Patrick Wilson). In the afternoon, young, inexperienced Sienna (Kristine Froseth) arrives from Idaho, saying she has been offered a job as a junior assistant. Jane, concerned for Sienna's well-being, goes to the human resources department to file a report after dropping Sienna off at a five-star hotel being paid for by the company. Wilcock (Matthew Macfadyen), the head of HR, encourages Jane to share her concerns, but later changes his mind and turns a blind eye to the harassment claims, speaking down to her. He says to Jane that she is jealous and discloses that filing a formal complaint would destroy her career. As Jane leaves his office, he reminds her that she has nothing to worry about, as Jane is not the boss's "type". Jane is upset, then returning to her desk receives a call from her boss, who has been informed about the unfiled report. He demands Jane write an email apology addressed to him, which she does. He replies saying that he is especially hard on Jane because he knows how great she is. Toward the end of the day, Janes teaches Sienna how to use the office phone systems. When it gets dark, Jane prepares a microwave dinner for herself while other employees leave. The boss stays late in his office with a young actress. He calls Jane on the intercom and tells her to go home. Jane goes to a coffee shop across the street and calls her father as she eats a muffin. After she hangs up, she sees a silhouette in her boss's window appearing to have sex. Also starring Makenzie Leigh as Ruby, Dagmara Dominczyk as Ellen, and Tony Torn as Boss. Garner gives a good, subdued performance as the assistant of the title, and Macfadyen makes an impression (with an impressive American accent) as the HR head. You could argue that nothing really happens throughout the film, but that seems to be the point, it is what you don't see going on that is the unseen focus. In the wake of the sentencing of disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and the "Me Too" movement, confronting Hollywood's long-ignored problems of sexual harassment, the script cleverly covers what goes on behind closed doors with monotonous email apologies, disingenuous phone calls and secretarial chores, making a quietly powerful fictionalised version of what we know now, an odd but interesting drama. Good!

I watched this because of the indie hype it received.... What a bomb! Oddly enough, it reminded me of "The Devil Wears Prada," which, in comparison, is so much better than this! At least, in "Prada," we see a developing arc in Andy's character--from condescension to mania to dismissal. In this flick, the "assistant" is disgruntled & jaded from her pre-dawn start to her day to the very end. Her character remains static like an EKG flatline from beginning to end. And what should have been a dramatic clincher in the film--her confession to Human Resources about her boss--ends up being (justifiably) hearsay, thereby muting the very real toxic environment that her character is supposed to be revealing! In being so disappointing, it became also very annoying.

In the early going, I knew right away this film would not appeal to a lot of viewers. It starts out slowly and never really revs up to any speed, however I did find the idea of the story compelling and provocative. As a newly hired assistant in a production office, Jane (Julia Garner) is not much more than a cog in an impersonal machine, handling menial assignments that come with the territory. There's almost the feeling that she keeps busy with tasks that she doesn't even have to do, like emptying the trash and babysitting the kids of her boss's nanny. Throughout there are hints that the 'boss', who's rarely if ever seen, is a serial womanizer who treats all of his employees with contempt. An attempt to level the playing field between herself and a brand new hire by visiting personnel results in Jane being subtly admonished to mind her own business if she wishes to remain employed.

So with all that, what I was expecting in the way of resolution was some breakthrough moment, perhaps an Ozark style Ruthie assault that would leave heads spinning and a jerk of a boss summarily put in his place. Instead, the story diffuses with a whimper, with only the recognition that Jane doesn't have the power to effect change in an abusively hostile workplace. That ending is bound to elicit it's share of 'Is it over with' moments far and wide, and quite frankly, I had to do a rewind on my DVD to see if I had missed something. The sad thing about Jane, she probably winds up going back to work the very next day.