The Assistant reminds one of Chantal Akerman's Jeanne Dielman, 23. quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles from 1975 in its quotidian minimalist style as well as its plot of a woman essentially all alone in a patriarchal society. Julia Gardner (of Ozark and Inventing Anna) is Jane, who has been working for five weeks at the bottom of the pecking order in a film company in Tribeca with a boss obviously based on Harvey Weinstein. She sweeps up, answers the phone (including calls from the boss's wife trying to find out where he is), getting coffee and sandwiches and even escorting the boss's new mistress to a hotel. She gets suspicious of one of the boss's new hires and goes to report the situation to a Human Resources executive (played by Matthew Macfadyen) who defends the boss and tells her she has nothing to worry about because "you're not his type," i.e., he acts like any other Human Resources executive I've ever dealt with or heard about. Jane meekly returns to her office and teaches the new hire how to use the phones.
Jane is treated condescendingly by everyone in the office the way such employees often are, especially if they are female. She calls her father at the end of a long day and says things are okay and she is working towards being a producer. Writer and director Kitty Green and her cinematographer Michael Latham portray accurately one day in the life of an employee who is alone in New York even when she is in an office full of people and Julia Gardner does a superb job of showing what she thinks and feels by her movements and expressions, without having to say a word.
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