The Assistant (2019)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Assistant |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 85 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Kitty Green |
| script | Kitty Green |
| production | Kitty Green, Scott Macaulay , James Schamus , P. Jennifer Dana , Ross Jacobson |
| music | Tamar-kali |
| camera | Michael Latham |
| cut | Kitty Green, Blair McClendon |
| occupation | |
| |
The Assistant is a film drama by Kitty Green that premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in late August 2019 and was shown in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival in February 2020 . The film was released in US cinemas at the end of January 2020.
action
Jane is the first to come to the office on Monday mornings, brews coffee and exchanges clichéd greetings with the colleagues who gradually come in. She's been working for a film production company for two months, and the office is where the stars come and go. Jane is the junior assistant of a prominent entertainment mogul, organizes, calls and copies, checks orders, looks after her boss's children when his wife comes into the office, and is friendly and reserved and almost invisible to most. She is so busy that she even forgot her father's birthday.
Jane is also repeatedly used by her colleagues for private matters, but she is not really integrated. When Sienna, a young woman, comes into the office and signs a contract as the new assistant, Jane turns to the HR manager Wilcock and tells him that the young, inexperienced woman was accommodated in the hotel and suggests that the boss only had her because of her appearance and could possibly force her to do sexual favors in this position. The HR manager doesn't understand the problem and thinks Jane is just jealous of the new colleague. She doesn't want to sweep the matter under the rug, but the HR manager does. Your boss and your two direct colleagues quickly find out about the report to the HR manager. The colleagues tell her to come to them first the next time and dictate the apology email to the boss. Whenever his wife shows up in the office, Jane is about to tell her about her observations regarding her husband's dealings with the young women.
The new assistant Sienna begins her work and is placed at the desk across from Jane. She explains the work to her and also how the telephone works. When she is the last employee to leave the office in the evening and only her boss remains, she sees him through the window having sex. Jane calls her father to congratulate him on his birthday, but does not tell him what problems she faced at work that day, nor about how her boss degrades young female employees into objects he likes.
production
Directed by Kitty Green , who also wrote the script.
Julia Garner took on the role of the eponymous assistant Jane. Kristine Frøseth plays the new young assistant Sienna, Matthew Macfadyen plays the HR manager Wilcock and Alexander Chaplin plays her superior colleague Max. Jon Orsini and Noah Robbins can be seen in the roles of their colleagues in their office room. Jay O. Sanders lends his voice to Jane's boss, who is never seen in the film.
The premiere took place on August 30, 2019 at the Telluride Film Festival . From January 24, 2020, the film was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in the Spotlight section. The cinema release in the USA took place on January 31, 2020. In February 2020, the film was presented in the Panorama section of the Berlin Film Festival . It was due to hit theaters in the UK on April 3, 2020. In September 2020 it will be presented at the American Film Festival in Deauville.
reception
Age ratings and reviews
In the USA, the film received an R rating from the MPAA , which corresponds to a rating of 17 and over.
Of the reviews listed on Rotten Tomatoes , 91 percent are rather positive with an average rating of 7.5 out of a possible 10 points.
Carolin Ströbele writes in her review in Die Zeit that the allusions to the former Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein cannot be overlooked in this film. The creeping to the cross, like the apology email, is common practice in this company. Even if you never get to see him, the nameless boss is omnipresent in every scene, just because of the fear this man spreads. What is interesting about The Assistant's approach is that the film neither shows the sexual violence perpetrated by the boss, nor does it ever openly express it. Everything is limited to hints, so Ströbele. This dehumanization at work, which Jane experiences again and again, makes the film meaningful far beyond the #MeToo topic : “It shows in an oppressive way how members of a certain system participate in silence. Because, in their opinion, there is no point in raising your voice; because it is inconvenient; because it hinders one's own advancement; and because nobody wants to hear it. "
The Atlantic's David Sims compares The Assistant to a horror film with a dash of Kafkaesque surrealism , when people are at the service of a person so monstrous the camera literally can't see them.
Awards
- Nomination in the competition
Web links
- The Assistant in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Assistant in the program of the Sundance Film Festival (English)
- The assistant in the program of the Berlin Film Festival
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Panorama 2020: (Un) common Grounds. In: berlinale.de. Retrieved December 17, 2019.
- ↑ a b The Assistant. In: sundance.org. Retrieved December 18, 2019.
- ^ The Assistant. In: filmdates.co.uk. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
- ^ The Assistant. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Accessed April 30, 2020.
- ↑ Carolin Ströbele: "The Assistant": When the silence becomes deafening. In: Die Zeit, February 24, 2020.
- ↑ David Sims: The Assistant Is a Subtle Horror Film for the #MeToo Era. In: The Atlantic, February 1, 2020.
- ^ The Assistant. In: festival-deauville.com. Retrieved July 29, 2020.