Synopsis
A searing look at a day in the life of an assistant to a powerful executive. As Jane follows her daily routine, she grows increasingly aware of the insidious abuse that threatens every aspect of her position.
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Cast
- Julia GarnerJane
- Matthew MacfadyenWilcock
- Makenzie LeighRuby
- Kristine FrosethSienna
- Jonny OrsiniMale Assistant 2
- Noah RobbinsMale Assistant 1
- Alexander ChaplinMax
- Jay O. SandersBoss (voice)
- Juliana CanfieldSasha
- Dagmara DomińczykEllen
Recommendations
- 91
The A.V. Club
The Assistant is more of a spartan procedural, its narrative a methodical accounting of one day—typical in incident, atypical in dawning realization—for an entry-level employee at the New York production house of a Weinstein-like figure. - 90
New York Magazine (Vulture)
What makes the film such a spare but searingly insightful treatment of the issues at the core of Me Too is the way it refuses to separate its unseen executive’s sexual predation from the larger structures that enable it. - 83
IndieWire
A quiet work with major ambitions, The Assistant is a significant cultural statement in cinematic form. - 83
Entertainment Weekly
Instead of melodrama, the movie finds its traction in parsing out micro-aggressions and mood: a sort of devastating slow-drip portrait of the power structures that allowed a man like Weinstein to happen — and keep more like him in place, untouched by any justice a hashtag can reach. - 80
Vanity Fair
[Green has] made a powerful movie about the ways power enforces silence, even between assistants and other underlings—people convinced they have everything to lose. It’s a movie about the tragedy of being brought into the fold and conditioned into that silence. And it’s a movie about how a person feels when they believe they have nowhere to go. - 75
The Playlist
Clinical in nature and matter-of-fact (but still affecting), The Assistant is essentially a procedural about being a personal assistant to a powerful Hollywood man and all that entails. - 70
Time
Garner is perfectly cast, a pixie of steel. You can see by the stern set of Jane’s lips and by the way, time and again, she just barely represses an eye roll, that she’s tough enough to handle all of this–and yet she knows she shouldn’t have to. - 70
TheWrap
While the filmmaker rightly understands that shock value isn’t the only way to tell a visceral story, its central performance by Julia Garner is what makes the film most interesting to watch.
