The Assistant (2019 film)

The film takes place over the course of a day, following Jane, a junior assistant who has been working at a film production company in New York for five weeks. She arrives early and performs various menial administrative tasks. It becomes clear that her boss has been having sex in his office and facilitating a culture of sexual harassment at the company. A young inexperienced woman arrives from Idaho, saying she has been offered a job. Jane, concerned for the woman's welfare, goes to the Human Resources department to file a report. The HR employee she speaks with encourages her to share her concerns, but then makes it clear he is turning a blind eye to the harassment. She leaves, upset, and gets yelled at by her boss, who has clearly been informed of the report, when she returns to her desk. At the end of the day, her boss is staying in his office late with the woman. Jane goes to a coffee shop across the street and sees a silhouette of them appearing to have sex.

• Julia Garner as Jane
• Matthew Macfadyen as Wilcock
• Kristine Froseth as Sienna
• Makenzie Leigh as Ruby
• Noah Robbins as Male Assistant
• Jon Orsini as Male Assistant
• Dagmara Domińczyk as Donna
• Alexander Chaplin as Max
• Juliana Canfield as Sasha
• Bregje Heinen as Tatiana
• Patrick Wilson as Famous Actor[4]

In September 2018, it was announced Kitty Green would write and direct the film with James Schamus and Scott Macaulay producing under their Symbolic Exchange banner.[5] In December 2018, Julia Garner joined the cast of the film.[6] In April 2019, Matthew Macfadyen, Kristine Froseth, Makenzie Leigh, Noah Robbins and Dagmara Domińczyk joined the cast of the film. Production concluded that same month in New York City.[7] The film helps explain how sexually predatory behavior by powerful men often remains hidden.[8]

The Assistant had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019.[9] Shortly after, Bleecker Street acquired distribution rights to the film, and set it for a January 31, 2020, release.[10]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 171 reviews, with an average rating of 7.52/10. The critical consensus reads, "Led by a powerhouse performance from Julia Garner, The Assistant offers a withering critique of workplace harassment and systemic oppression."[11] On Metacritic, which assesses films on a score out of 100, The Assistant holds a score 76 based on reviews from 29 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews."[12]

Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called it "a claustrophobic, intimately unsettling movie" and stated that "it can claim to be the first drama that addresses the #MeToo issue".[13] In a similarly positive review, Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times lauded Julia Garner's performance and described the film as "[shining] a light on a malevolent shadow". She also complimented it on being "wound taut and perfectly controlled", just like its main protagonist, making for an experience that "feels entirely real".[14] Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times viewed the film as "less a #MeToo story than a painstaking examination of the way individual slights can coalesce into a suffocating miasma of harassment" and also noted Garner's lead performance, which she said "makes the slow draining of Jane’s soul almost visible".[15]

• Me Too movement
• Michelle Obama's October 13, 2016 speech
• Weinstein effect
• Time's Up

• The Assistant on IMDb