The Assistant (2020)
Directed by Kitty Green
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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What critics compared The Assistant to
Of course there has to be an arc to this character, this milquetoast Hollywood version of assistants we’ve seen in “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Swimming With Sharks,” “The Big Picture” and “30 Rock.”
For those who appreciated the woe-is-me fireworks of “The Devil Wears Prada,” in which a put-upon young assistant pulled back the curtain on her nightmare boss (based, in that case, on Vogue editor Anna Wintour), Green’s approach will feel flat and anti-dramatic.
Written and directed by Kitty Green -- whose experience in documentaries shows in the spare nature of the presentation -- "The Assistant" shares some DNA with movies like "Swimming With Sharks" and "The Devil Wears Prada," which focus on assistants to powerful people in media, and the indignities associated with it.
At times, it feels like watching The Devil Wears Prada be reworked by Ingmar Bergman.
It makes The Devil Wears Prada , with its old-fashioned workplace drama, the force of nature at its center and the lively employee kvetching, look like an exciting place to work.
Matthew McFadyen, co-star with Keira K. in the big screen “Pride & Prejudice,” plays the sympathetic HR guy who hears her timid complaints, and we get a dazzling, understated dose of his transition from “You can tell me .
At the heart of the film is a mesmerizing scene when Jane visits an HR manager (the excellent Matthew Macfadyen, Mr. Darcy in the 2005 “Pride & Prejudice”).
More direct and emotionally genuine jabs at institutionalized sexism would be Neil LaBute’s “In the Company of Men” (1997) and Kitty Green’s fictional take on all things Harvey Weinstein, “The Assistant” (2020).
Without ever seeking chronological clarity or any sort of temporal linearity, the film handles these shifts masterfully, thanks to the precise editing work of Blair McClendon (Kitty Greene’s The Assistant ).