The Assistant Needs a New Job

 

 

 

THE ASSISTANT  (2019)

Directed by Kitty Green

Bleecker Street, 87 minutes, R (language)

★★

 

The Assistant splashed down in the post-Harvey Weinstein Zeitgeist Sea. Because of that, it has gotten praise from MeToo and other such movements. I understand the desire to embrace such a film, but The Assistant is both dishwater dull and slow–in a geological sense. 

 

It follows one day in the life of Jane (Julia Garner), a novice junior assistant in a New York City film production company. Her job is unabated drudgery. She arises before the sun to make her way from Astoria to Manhattan. Don’t think of her duties have anything much to do with movies. At best she’s a concierge who books flights, makes sure that her boss’s limo shows up in time, or that the actress du jour is on the schedule. Most of the time she’s a factotum who makes coffee and copies, cleans the break room, and is expected to kowtow to the two male assistants (Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins), who dutifully ignore her–unless she makes a mistake. Mostly, Jane is invisible. Actors and actresses pass through the doors and dump their coats and coffee cups on her while making as little eye contact as humanly possible.

 

Jane gets a jolt when Sienna (Kristine Froseth) shows up from Idaho. She’s a new junior assistant and Jane senses that she’s a replacement-in-waiting. She’s pretty to Jane’s plainness and the boss has ensconced Sienna in a posh Midtown hotel. Jane musters enough courage to take her concerns to Wilcock (Matthew Macfayden), the HR director, but she can’t quite say that she thinks Sienna is there because she is the boss’s latest sexual conquest. Wilcock essentially belittles Jane and offers only the solace that she need not worry because, “You’re not his type.” When she arrives back at her desk a few minutes later, she finds that Wilcock has told everyone about her complaint.

 

Jane’s day ends as it began–in darkness. She’s so wiped she nearly falls asleep at a coffee shop and she doesn’t have the energy to take more than a few nibbles from a muffin. We sense that she’s on borrowed time, but I will confess that I wondered why she was in her job in the first place. Jane has the courage of a timid little mouse. Everything about her seems wrong–her belief that within five years she’d be a producer, her clothing, and for sure her low-key personality. It’s as if she never got the memo that, even were your boss not a monster, New York is a tough town. The boss never actually appears on screen–we hear only his voice on the telephone dropping a few F-bombs–and see his silhouette in a window as he and Sienna are presumably having it off. His physical absence is a nice touch that enhances the existential dread hovering over Jane. Beyond this, however, The Assistant plays like a rejected script for The Office.

 

Garner’s affect is so flat that we want to hug her and tell her it’s okay to back home–presumably the Midwest as she’s a Northwestern grad–to her loving and supportive parents. Or maybe take a job in a library that’s more befitting for quiet people such as she. After all, it’s not as if New York will magically become more accommodating with a better boss and coworkers.

 

Make no mistake, those coworkers are complete jerks. They are the sort who smirk at Jane and inwardly revel when she is called on the carpet for doing tasks that they dumped on her. But here is where The Assistant falls apart. Much more needs to happen for this to fit the profile of now labeled the Weinstein effect. This film is not really about sexual predation. We only know that Jane suspects that Sienna is a victim. Why? Because she’s from Idaho? Because the boss cheats on his wife? All we know for certain is that nearly everyone who comes through the door is quisquous and self-absorbed. This makes the production office a toxic workplace for all underlings. It’s what we get because we knee-capped labor unions that mediated against abuses of power.

 

The Assistant is thus a drab office drama sans any actual drama. The few outside shots have Hopperesque qualities that convey Jane’s anomie more effectively than the claustrophobia of the office. But none of this changes the fact that the creepiness of The Assistant is too mannered to pack a wallop. We need a good film about the Weinstein effect, but this isn’t it.

 

Rob Weir