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A Julia Garner’s interpretation of few words but immense physical eloquence is the anchor of this impressive # MeToo era drama about bullying and abuse in the workplace. After a day in the life of a young woman with dreams of making her mark on the film and television industry, it is a sobering portrait of a dirty little secret that was put in the limelight by the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Even more powerful due to its discreet tone, this discreet piece has a strong hit, since it exposes the network of silence that allowed a very modern horror story.
Garner (who won an Emmy for his work on television Ozark) is Jane, a high-achieving college graduate who is at the bottom rung of the ladder as a junior assistant to an unidentified New York entertainment magnate. The appointment may have promises of great opportunities ahead, but for now it is quite destructive. An opening sequence, played by the lonely tensions of Tamar-kali’s meager score, finds Jane being led into the office before dawn, turning on the lights on her colleagues’ desks, first to enter, last to leave. His tasks are subservient but strangely demanding: making coffee, changing the paper in the copier, ordering lunch, and arranging travel and accommodation for an ever-changing list of executives and clients in need.
When her boss is out of the office, Jane discreetly cleans her den, sweeping away powdered debris from her desk, removing used syringes from her wastebasket, removing suspiciously abandoned earrings from the carpet, even cleaning stains from the sofa, a matter of the office. joke. From the beginning, it’s clear he’s a grotesque (and worse) philanthropist, leaving Jane to answer his wife’s increasingly angry calls (“I’m not going to lie for him”), and then yelled at for ” interfere”. in their “personal affairs”. Over the course of a single day where she does nothing more than meet her needs, we see Jane write two separate apology emails, which include the humiliating assurance that she will not “disappoint you again.”
Brilliantly, Green chooses to keep the monster in the center of this maze off the screen.
The demoralizing effect of such kafkaesco torment is, of course, completely deliberate, deployed with ease practiced to disorient and disorient. While seeing Jane being yelled at on the phone can be heartbreaking, even more sinister is the email that follows, assuring you that she’s being harshly treated because she’s “good”, but it could be “cool.” Later, when a driver tells Jane that her boss thinks she is “smart,” this downtrodden helper is almost pathetically grateful for the second-hand compliment. Crucially, both abuse and praise are forms of attack, working together to undermine Jane’s self-confidence, ensuring that she remains in place, eager to please and placate.
Originally conceived as a “scripted nonfiction” work, this insightful film by Kitty Green (who made the documentaries Ukraine is not a brothel and JonBenet Casting) became a drama inspired by the real-life stories of women working in the film and television industry. The result may be fictional, but everything seems to be true, from the slight embarrassment of the office, which has no indication of the glamor of the old-school movie, to the daily bullying practiced by Jane’s co-workers, who know that this is what it takes to succeed Within this toxic ecosystem, no one is interested in Jane’s voiced concerns about a vulnerable young woman who has just arrived from Boise, Idaho, and who seems poised to become the next victim of her boss. predator. In a skin-crawling smarminess scene, Jane’s tentative complaints are deflected by the slippery RR executive. .
Brilliantly, Green chooses to keep the monster in the center of this maze off-screen, the presence of Jane’s faceless boss recorded primarily by the sound of her laughter and screaming seeping through closed doors and phone lines. It is a cunning choice that gives universality to this invisible spectrum, focusing our attention on the toxicity of his regime, allowing his crimes, silencing his enemies, turning his subordinates into de facto accomplices. Cleverly, Green shows us how the boss’s cloak of behavior has been embraced by everyone in this workplace, creating a culture in which covert assault and harassment are just business as usual.
It is a credit to Garner who, as a character who effectively has no voice, manages to say a lot about Jane’s situation through posture, pose, and gesture; the way he constantly seems restless in his office chair; the fleeting hint of alarm in his eyes at the sound of a ringing telephone; the fall of exhausted defeat that accompanies his lonely nighttime snack. The weight of the world rests on his shoulders, and thanks to Garner’s nuanced performance and Green’s deft handling, we feel it for us, too.
