Directing: B+
Acting: B+
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

It’s so easy to imagine what might be said by people who would not like The Assistant—using language that reveals they just don’t get it. Consider its critics score on MetaCritic versus its user score, which is sadly predictable: 77 vs. 41. Granted, only three user reviews have been posted, because virtually no one is seeing this movie—which is too bad. How about over at Rotten Tomatoes, then? 89% among critics vs. 22% among viewers—this time among 119 “audience reviews.” Again, sadly predictable.

And sure, it’s true, it seems as though very few things actually happen in this movie. But that is precisely the point: the subtleties with which toxic masculinity manifests itself, particularly in American corporate environments. Audiences who aren’t seeing it are simply not paying attention, and thereby serve largely as proof of the point.

I’ll admit, it took a while for me to come around on this movie as well. Writer-director Kitty Green, here offering her first feature film that is not a documentary, presents a single workday in the life of Jane (Juia Garner), a very hardworking young woman who commutes from Astoria into Manhattan every day to work for a talent agency executive. And Green takes a novel approach, keeping the perspective on Jane at all times, and never even showing us the executive for whom she works.

We see plenty of the men who work under him, though—and above Jane—and the myriad ways they take Jane for granted or patronize her. Not one male character is exempt, but this is only something that registers to the viewer when keenly observed. To a large degree, they can’t necessarily even be blamed for their nuanced behaviors. The other two assistants who work at desks near Jane, both young men, perhaps don’t even realize the broad picture in this context. They probably mentally pat themselves on the back for “assisting” Jane in drafting apology emails to the executive for whom they all work—with no direct regard for the vile behaviors they are all tolerating on the part of that man.

n one fairly early shot, Jane is in her boss’s empty office, scrubbing the upholstery on the couch clean. It’s pretty easy to guess what she is cleaning, but it becomes much more explicit when a bunch of workers are later in there waiting for the boss to arrive and one of them says, “Don’t ever sit there.”

In other words, Jane is suffering countless subtle indignities which, taken individually, appear to anyone else like nothing. When a new young assistant is hired and it looks very much like the boss is taking advantage of her, even though it can’t be proven, Jane sees a man in HR who is very gracious at first, and then asks her why she seems intent on taking the huge opportunity of this job “and throwing it away on this bullshit.”

Even though The Assistant clocks in at an unusually brief 87 minutes, it really takes its time to get here. We see her doing a lot of mundane things, turning on all the lights when she is first in the office, making copies, even washing dishes in the staff kitchen—where other office workers absent-mindedly leave their own dishes for her to wash. This movie has a real “boiling frog” aspect to it, for both Jane and for the audience. There is something truly gross about what Jane is going through, which only becomes clear so gradually it’s easy to lose sight of where and how it started.

And I keep coming back to viewers who don’t get it. A choice “audience review” reads, in part, “That sandwich-throwing incident would have been met by a chair flying through the air from me -- and many women I know, too.” Uh, sure it would. Because behavior like that is always tolerated in corporate offices, right? Too many people see a movie like this and convince themselves they would never tolerate being in a position in which they just can’t win. Most of them are wrong.

That said, The Assistant strongly suggests that maybe—maybe—Jane will get ahead eventually, and find some measure of success, so long as she falls in line with, and turns a blind eye to, a boss who has a voraciously sexual appetite and a nasty temper. But will she achieve the same level of success, or any success as quickly, as her male peers?

Overall: B+