SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL (THE ASSISTANT)

 

Kitty Green's 'The Assistant' moves to the beat of the fax machine, the elevator and the telephone.

However it is the ordinariness of this office setting that makes Green's first fictional feature a disturbing and gripping watch.

Coated in the dark palettes of Michael Lathem's cinematography, the movie immediately conjures up the seediness of the Harvey Weinstein affair.

However this #MeToo cautionary tale could just as easily have been set in a corporate law firm, an investment bank or a tech conglomerate.

Green's film is about toxic workplaces that turn a blind eye and facilitate the worst behaviour.

Julia Garner plays Jane, a quiet, overworked junior assistant working for a monstrous movie mogul at a film production company in New York.

Set during the course of a working day in the dead of winter, the film follows Jane's grim life.

Basically a dogsbody for the chief executive, who we never see, she has to field phone calls including from his often angry mum, photocopy scripts, pack his overnight bag, arrange his travel and clear up his office after every meeting.

This includes retrieving a needle from the office, discovering an earring and cleaning the sofa.

She also has to endure the casual sexism of her two offuce colleagues, played by Joe Orsini and Noah Robbins who condescendingly dictate her apologetic emails when she gets bawled out over the phone by her boss.

They also pass over his family phone calls.

As the day unfolds, Jane ferries women to and from her boss's office, sometimes having to lie to his wife about his whereabouts.

Eventually something has to give and it happens when she is asked to escort a new junior assistant, Kristine Froseth's Sienna to a hotel the mogul is paying for, after he met her waitressing in Boise, Idaho. 

Jane decides to report her concerns to Matthew MacFadyen's Head of Human Resources, Mr Wilcock but will they be addressed?

Writer and director Green comes from a tradition of documentary filmmaking and had originally intended 'The Assistant' to be a factual movie which recreated events.

However the Australian opted to make it a fictional piece instead - albeit one rooted in horrific experience.

It is a gamble that pays off.

Green's documentary instinct as an observer of human behaviour gives 'The Assistant' an authenticity and a very deep chill.

Trusting her audience to soak up every image, every knowing glance, every subtext to the sparse dialogue, she builds up a convincing depiction of a grim, oppressive workplace where sexism and bullying are not only rife but tolerated.

Even worse, sexual harassment is enabled and ignored.

Jane, stoically played by Garner in a terrific lead performance, is effectively a slave - forced to clean the messes her boss leaves behind and she endures the most demeaning behaviour.

Overworked and highly stressed, she is forced to grab food on the go only five weeks into a job that seems a world away from the glamour of the movies.

Occasionally she is thrown some bait to keep her on board - her boss at one point tells her by email he is only nasty to her because he has great plans for her.

The genius of Green's feature, however, is the way it hints at the crimes taking place in the boss's office without ever showing what is happening.

This see no evil, hear no evil approach makes the audience complicit in what is going on and magnifies the gaslighting.

Orsini and Robbins are excellent as ambitious junior colleagues who are slightly higher on the corporate pecking order but treat Jane like a minion.

MacFadyen also turns in another great performance in a pivotal moment of the film and gets to deliver the most devastating line.

Froseth and Mackenzie Leigh as an aspiring actress named Ruby do a very effective job as the victims of the mogul.

An unseen Jay O Sanders provides his voice on the other end of a telephone, with Manu Narayan, Heather Macrae and Mark Jakoby also providing the voices of her boss' chauffeur, Jane's mum and her dad.

Patrick Wilson also turns up briefly in an unexpected and largely silent cameo.

Aided by Lathem's claustrophobic camera work, Green pieces together a disturbing film that lingers long in the memory.

It should be seen as widely as possible, if only to serve as a warning about toxic workplaces and the cost of turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the most unacceptable behaviour.

('The Assistant' was released in UK and Irish streaming services on May 1, 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and on DVD on July 20, 2020)