The Assistant review: A wide-scoped skewering of sexual bullies

This film was originally scheduled to go up against No Time to Die. Now, thanks to Covid, it’s got practically zero competition and has become the main event, proof that good things come to those who wait (on other people).

Kitty Green’s deceptively quiet drama charts a day in the life of a middle-class minion. Jane (Julia Garner), works for a New York film mogul best described as Weinstein-esque. We never see the guy, but he gives off a recognisable stench.

Yes, The Assistant is a takedown of Weinstein. Yes, it eviscerates his brand. But by keeping details about the boss vague, Green widens the film’s scope. Think of it as a portrait of the asshole as a middle-aged man.

Jane’s boss could be any scuzzy, hot-tempered — if also astute and fitfully charming — blow-hard. And he could be working in any industry viewed as glamorous.

Green strips away that glamour. Jane is the one who has to clean the much-used office couch. She also takes calls from the boss’s angry wife, looks after his feral kids and escorts a pretty new assistant to a nearby hotel, to which the boss absconds that very afternoon.

Jane and the girl, Sienna (Kristine Froseth), are practically the same age and establish a connection. Queasy with concern, Jane visits the HR chief (Matthew Macfadyen), who delivers weasel words with such melliflous conviction that you almost swallow them.

Jane knows she won’t get support from her hipster male colleagues (who snigger every time she’s lumbered with an onerous task; like Phil and Jerry in The Larry Sanders Show, they’re torn between hating their boss and wanting to be him). Throughout the company, in fact, it’s taken as self-evident that the young actresses being groomed by the boss are bigger schemers than he is.

In 2019, Garner rightly won an Emmy for her turn as Ozark’s psycho teen, Ruth. The 26-year-old actress owns The Assistant, her ebullient hair (which resembles a scrumptious pile of walnuts) so at odds with her character’s tiny, clenched, body. Like Elisabeth Moss, Garner has the kind of fascinating face that it’s somehow credible others might overlook. Jane’s a pathetic dogsbody. She’s also a fledging producer, hungry for a brilliant career. That disconnect is what Garner mines, with total success.

That Jane attempts to blow the whistle on her boss has led many to compare The Assistant with Bombshell. The general consensus is that this is “deeper” than Charlize Theron’s project, but why pit them against each other? Both films skewer sexual bullies and stress the need for solidarity. They just do it in different ways.

The Assistant drives home the point that when women are victimised, they invariably get held up for judgment. We still put the blame on Mame.

Luckily, 35-year-old Green has found a way to pull the rug out from business as usual. You find yourself wondering — with great excitement — who or what she’ll topple next.

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