The Assistant

"Don't worry...she'll get more out of it than he will.....trust me."

A bone weary statement made at the end of a long day. A statement drawn from long painful experience, an admission of failure and an acceptance of a horrible status quo.

Jane goes to work everyday in the dark of the morning and leaves in the dark of the night. As the assistant to the head man at at the film production house she works at she does everything, from dealing with his family to cleaning stains off his furniture. She's the whipping boy of the office, treated badly and dismissively by everyone from the top down, including the male assistants. Over the course of a day she realises her boss is using his position of power in ways she can't bring herself to ignore.

The Assistant is a powerful watch. A film that turns a spotlight on an industry rife with endemic sexism and abuse of power. Power, I've used that word 4 times now. That's what it's all about. That's what the movie business runs on. When you wield it everyone falls in line. Everyone's terrified. You don't even have to appear and people will still trip over themselves to please you. The antagonist of The Assistant doesn't appear once in the film yet his presence is draped all over it. His actions rattle everyone, male and female but it's the women of the office that bear the brunt. Gaslighting, mindgames, coercion, abuse. All in a day's (unpaid) work. Because it's accepted at executive level it trickles down. HR (a rage inducing cameo from Matthew MacFayden) won't do a thing about it, the other assistants treat Jane like muck, even the actresses coming into the office to audition don't see her as human.

It's subtly blunt story. We see nothing but feel it all. The spectre of Harvey Weinstein and all the other #MeToo scumbags hang heavy in the air. The women broken by the industry are represented by Jane and Julia Garner plays her magnificently. Coming to a job everyday that's ripping the soul from her body. Everyone sees her as weak but Garner plays her with a hidden strength only the audience can see. Holding back tears of disbelief as her problems with the job are whitewashed over by a department created to protect workers. A deep breath taken before diving back into a job that most prople would run screaming from. Garner's in every scene and she does herself proud, creating a character you'll think about long after the end credits roll.

It's as far from a fun watch as you'll possibly get but it's a necessary and timely one. It's ostensibly about the movie industry but it's a mirror on society. The abuse of power (that word again) and how that abuse takes off when people accept it, ignore it, pretend it isn't happening as long as it isn't happening to them. It's how monsters thrive and leave so many broken in their wake.

The Assistant is out now on google movies and all other streaming platforms. It's worth your time.