The Assistant

Young college graduate Jane (shooting star Julia Garner) has a dream: to one day make it to the top as a film producer. So a job as a junior assistant to a powerful entertainment mogul seems like the perfect career springboard. But instead of gaining her first showbiz experience, Jane's days are filled with menial tasks: Making coffee, changing copy paper, answering calls, organizing lunches or trips, greeting new employees. The longer the young woman follows her daily routine and witnesses the offensive misconduct of her never-visible but omnipresent boss, the more she becomes aware of the power imbalance that encourages abuse. When Jane decides to fight against the abuses, she realizes how deeply they are rooted in the system... With “The Assistant”, director Kitty Green made the first film on the MeToo debate, whose parallels to the abuse scandal surrounding Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein are unmistakable. Green landed a great casting coup with Julia Garner, who won an Emmy for her role in the series “Ozark”. Garner's character makes the creeping dehumanization in the workplace palpable and makes 'The Assistant' meaningful far beyond the #MeToo issue - even if, interestingly, the film never depicts or expresses the sexual violence, but only works with allusions. "THE ASSISTANT is a stealth bomb of a movie: It barely makes a noise but it leaves a crater in your heart." (Boston Globe) “'I heard the same story over and over again. [says director Kitty Green] That people had felt trapped in a system of silence and ducking away. That assistants, as shown in the movie, had to look after their boss's children while he had sex with a co-worker, or make sure that libido enhancing drugs were in stock. [...] 'The Assistant' is an unusually quiet movie, it manages almost without background music, its soundtrack consists of the lifting of the telephone receiver, the clacking of the keyboards, the sounds of the photocopier. [...] It shows in a depressing way how members of a certain system participate in silence. Because, in their opinion, there is no point in raising their voices; because it is uncomfortable; because it hinders their own progress; and because simply no one wants to hear it.” (Carolin Ströbele, on: zeit.de)