Here's Ren Jender on a Sundance movie that moved straight into theaters this weekend...
Writer-director Kitty Green's The Assistant (now open in NYC and LA) is a Jeanne Dielman-like examination of a woman who is the newest assistant in Harvey Weinstein's office (though he's never named) in the time before the revelations of his rape and harassment of women came to light. The film delves into how serial sexual harassment makes the entire office (and of course the industry) complicit, even when individuals try to do the right thing.
The title character Jane (Julia Garner) is not clueless and she doesn't lack a conscience...
She sees what's going on (even though she doesn't spot her boss directly interacting with any of the women-- until the end) and even reports it, but her visit to HR doesn't solve the problem, it just gets her in trouble. She stands up for herself when Human Resources tries to question her previous work experience and she tries to stand up for the victims too, but her willingness to come forward doesn't matter. Afterward she's still stuck emailing the same groveling apology the Weinstein figure demands whenever staff do something that displeases him, "I overreacted...It was not my place to question your decision...I will not let you down again."
The film captures how vulnerable young women in offices are, not just to harassment (Jane herself is not harassed), but the mindset that normalizes the behavior. Male executives laugh (male laughter in this film is never a good thing) as they "joke" about what happens in the office (including on the couch) of the Weinstein stand-in.
The Assistant is realism that plays like a thriller. Film festivals are in some ways synonymous with sleep deprivation, but during this film I didn't even want to blink, let alone doze. Julia Garner's performance is a big part of what makes the film so compelling. She doesn't have much dialogue but the camera is on her face for most of the film: behind her eyes you can see the suspicions and misgivings accumulating as she weighs what to do.
Green interviewed nearly a hundred people as research and crystalized their experience into a screenplay in which the audience puts the pieces together in the same way, simultaneously with Jane. The film harks back to Elephant, Gus Van Sant's fictionalized take on the Columbine massacre, in how it provides many possible answers and arguments to all the questions and theories posited ("why didn't someone do something?") but avoids a definitive, tidy explanation.
In the Q and A after the film, Green revealed that "The same kind of stories emerged, the same patterns, and this isn't just in the film industry." But harassment and rape is very much a part of the film industry, especially at Sundance (never forget that Rose McGowan stated that Sundance is where Weinstein raped her). The Assistant is part of a wave of films at this year's festival (along with Eliza Hittman's transcendent Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, Emerald Fennell's disappointing and brutal Promising Young Woman and Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering's On the Record) that address harassment, rape and the aftermath for victims and predators.
This awards season has been surreal for many of us. The Weinstein revelations came less than three years ago, but a writer-director who has been collecting statuettes this year was also implicated in making his star actresses vulnerable to the serial predator, the same predator who had harassed the writer-director's ex-girlfriend and subsequently blackballed her. And yet with all the awards press we've barely heard a question from any outlet about these events. So perhaps we can take heart that films women direct (or co-direct) will continue to include the post-Weinstein fallout. As Julia Garner said after The Assistant's screening, "Kitty said it was going to be a quiet film and I think that's really important because the subject is so loud."