The film takes place over the course of a single day in the life of Jane, a junior assistant who has been working at a film production company in New York for five weeks. Jane arrives well before dawn and performs various menial administrative tasks. Her job's long hours and demanding tasks keep her busy and incredibly stressed. During a phone call with her mother, Jane learns that she forgot to call her father on his birthday. As Jane's day progresses, it becomes clear that her boss has been having sex in his office with many younger women and facilitates a culture of sexual harassment at the company. Many of the male executives make snide comments about the boss's affairs while the female executives handle their own workloads and discuss the possibility of transferring to other departments. Whenever Jane does something her boss deems a mistake, he verbally abuses her over the phone as her two male junior assistant coworkers watch silently. Throughout the day, a variety of people from the boss's life interact with Jane, including his wife, his children's nanny, a famous actor, and a group of Chinese film producers. In the afternoon, a young, inexperienced woman named Sienna arrives from Idaho, saying she has been offered a job as a junior assistant. Jane, concerned for Sienna's well-being, goes to the Human Resources department to file a report after dropping Sienna off at a 5-star hotel being paid for by the company. Wilcock, the head of HR, encourages Jane to share her concerns but later makes it clear that he is turning a blind eye to her harassment claims, arguing that filing a formal complaint would destroy Jane's career. As she leaves, he reminds her that she has nothing to worry about as Jane is not the boss's "type". Visibly upset, Jane receives a call from her boss who has been informed of the unfiled report when she returns to her desk. After chastising her over the phone, he demands Jane write an email apology and send it to him. He replies that he is especially hard on Jane because he knows how great she is. Towards the end of the day, Sienna arrives at the office so Jane can teach her how to use the phone systems. As night falls, Jane prepares a microwave dinner for herself while other employees leave; her boss stays late in his office with a young actress. He calls Jane on the intercom and tells her to go home. Jane goes to a coffee shop across the street and calls her father as she eats a muffin. After she hangs up, she sees a silhouette in her boss's window appearing to have sex.
In September 2018, it was announced Kitty Green would write and direct the film with James Schamus and Scott Macaulay producing under their Symbolic Exchange banner. In December 2018, Julia Garner joined the cast of the film. In April 2019, Matthew Macfadyen, Kristine Froseth, Makenzie Leigh, Noah Robbins and Dagmara Domińczyk joined the cast of the film. Production concluded that same month in New York City. The film helps explain how sexually predatory behavior by powerful men often remains hidden.
Release
The Assistant had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival on August 30, 2019. Shortly after, Bleecker Street acquired distribution rights to the film, and set it for a January 31, 2020, release.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 198 reviews, with an average rating of 7.58/10. The critical consensus reads, "Led by a powerhouse performance from Julia Garner, The Assistant offers a withering critique of workplace harassment and systemic oppression." On Metacritic, which assesses films on a score out of 100, The Assistant holds a score of 79 based on reviews from 43 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews." Writing for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw called it "a claustrophobic, intimately unsettling movie" and stated that "it can claim to be the first drama that addresses the #MeToo issue". In a similarly positive review, Moira Macdonald of the Seattle Times lauded Julia Garner's performance and described the film as " a light on a malevolent shadow". She also complimented it on being "wound taut and perfectly controlled", just like its main protagonist, making for an experience that "feels entirely real". Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times viewed the film as "less a #MeToo story than a painstaking examination of the way individual slights can coalesce into a suffocating miasma of harassment" and also noted Garner's lead performance, which she said "makes the slow draining of Jane’s soul almost visible".
