Julia Garner’s ‘The Assistant’ Will Make You Happy to Be Working From Home

Spending day and night cooped up in your makeshift home office can be exhausting. But there’s one movie that will help remind you that going into the office for work comes with its own tolls, and it’s finally on Hulu. Julia Garner’s The Assistant is an intentionally draining examination of workplace microaggressions and corruption that will leave you seething.

Written, directed, produced, and edited by Kitty Green, The Assistant masterfully takes a figure most films and professionals overlook and casts her in an entirely different light. The film follows Jane (Garner), a recently graduated junior assistant for a film production company who has dreams of one day becoming a producer. It’s immediately obvious that Jane is a smart person and a hard worker. She takes her work seriously, wordlessly coming into the office before anyone else is even awake and leaving well past the time her colleagues have called it for the night. Yet despite her dedication and passion for this world, Jane is a ghost in her own dream.

Though Green’s lens always centers on Jane, she’s never the center of the action. Long scenes will pass featuring Jane making herself a bowl of cereal alone in the kitchen or printing out scripts while the bustling world of her workplace happens around her. Jane is never included in office whisperings. Instead everything secretive she learns about her profession happens through overheard gossip and accidental sleuthing. Her two male co-workers who are also assistants don’t even give her the luxury of purposefully excluding her. Rather, it’s as if Jane doesn’t even exist.

It’s through this bizarre looking glass that Jane starts to uncover the oddities around her. An earring left in her boss’ office, the constant stream of beautiful actresses who will only be seen behind closed doors, one too many gross jokes about a particular couch — all of these stray details merge together to show her the truth. Her boss is as verbally abusive to Jane as he is sexually abusive to other women. And though the evidence is so overwhelmingly strong that a lowly, out-of-the-loop assistant discovers it, no one seems to care.

Julia Garner’s career has been marked by bold, strong characters. There are few women on television more foulmouthed or headstrong than Ozark‘s Ruth. Likewise her spoiled strength as Terra Newell in Dirty John and her heartbreaking goodness as Michelle Jones in Waco drove both of those series. In the wake of these career moves it’s fascinating to see Garner hone her subtlety. Jane is the most submissive Garner has played in years. And yet through every pointed look and nervous attempt to say something, she’s electric.

There are certainly great parts about spending your working hours in an office, from free coffee to the basic joy of talking in person to another human. But The Assistant is an oddly timely reminder of the dark side of office life. Take some time to appreciate the always excellent Julia Garner this afternoon, and prepare to be creeped out.

Where to stream The Assistant