ABUSE OF POWER
DAMON SMITH REVIEWS THE LATEST RELEASES TO WATCH AT HOME WHILE CINEMAS ARE CLOSED, INCLUDING THE ASSISTANT
SHOT over the course of one long day in the offices of a New York film production company, The Assistant is a discomfiting study of psychological warfare and harassment in the modern workplace. Writer-director Kitty Green’s impressive narrative feature debut unfolds through the eyes of one female graduate, who is five weeks into her thankless role and desperate to cling on to it.
Julia Garner delivers a riveting, quietly devastating performance as the mentally and physically exhausted title character, who suspects unconscionable behaviour behind closed doors but has nowhere to turn to expose abuses of power.
She is repeatedly berated by her boss for threatening to dismantle the wall of silence that encloses the office then cleverly encouraged with one curt email that reads: “I’m tough on you because I’m gonna make you great.”
Collusion between characters is conveyed in terrified glances.
Green’s lean script employs minimal dialogue to infer the sickening imbalance of power, such as when Garner’s lackey leaves the office while her boss conducts a late-night casting session with an actress (Mackenzie Leigh) and a female executive in the lift offers these meagre words of comfort: “Don’t worry, she’ll get more out of it than he will.”
Jane (Garner) arrives bleary-eyed before dawn to manage the diary of her omnipotent boss, who is heard but not seen. She cleans, photocopies, fields phone calls from his irate wife and steadfastly fills a metal medicine cabinet with 10mcg prescription injections of Alprostadil for erectile dysfunction.
Two nameless male assistants (Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins), operating in the other half of the office, silently monitor Jane’s actions.
When a young woman named Sienna (Kristine Froseth) from Boise, Idaho, arrives unannounced for a non-existent assistant’s role, Jane spirits her away to a nearby hotel. Soon after, production executives Max (Alexander Chaplin) and Donna (Dagmara Dominczyk) joke that the boss is probably at the hotel too and Jane hurriedly arranges a confidential meeting with human resources manager Wilcock (Matthew Macfadyen).
During their stilted conversation, Jane explains that she hopes to be a film producer one day.
“So why are you in here trying to throw it all away?” asks Wilcock coldly.
“I’ve got 400 resumes teed up for your position alone.”
Absorbing the threat, Jane agrees to forget the matter and prepares to leave. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You’re not his type,” casually remarks Wilcock.
The Assistant hints at unspeakable horrors within the framework of a mundane working day.
Our sympathy is firmly tethered to Garner’s dreamer, who wrestles with her culpability as a silent witness.
Through Green’s lens, power corrupts absolutely and the truth only sets you free when you have the money and connections to wilfully distort it.