So she was staring unblinking at the phone while it rang. 3 times it rang, before she picked it up. Her 2 office-mates were watching, one leaned over whispering politely, offering to take the call, but she silenced him and picked up.
To describe her is to compare her face to that of Botticelli’s Venus. As if Venus came alive as Carol Kane. Their eyes are exactly the same, she and Venus, but her mouth is sadder. We're in New York, where her film industry position is lower office rung, but she does it with troubled tenderness, with care, far more than due diligence, and nothing escapes her always observant eyes.
What she witnesses goes against the grain, she’s troubled. Her philandering boss, whose frustrated suspicious wife she has to deal with when he “can’t be found” which happens on a daily basis. Her 2 male office mates do less than half her workload. She tries a meeting with the company's HR “situation-handler", and it backfires - she’s accused of being jealous of the boss’s new victim, the young girl from Idaho she’s trying to protect. HR guy says she’s jealous because the boss put the girl up in a swanky hotel, and she lives frugally in ill-famed low caste Astoria. Then, as she’s leaving, he says “Don’t worry. You’re not his type.”
HR informs her boss of the incident, of course, (it’s a club) even though she didn't raise a formal complaint, and she gets a furious call demanding an apology, or she’ll be fired. So she writes the apology, and it’s carefully well worded and businesslike, explaining how she would never interfere or question his directives again and emails it to him. He calls her back immediately, telling her she’s forgiven, and that he values her because she’s good, and he’s going to make her great. She still has that Venus faraway look in her eyes. She’s wondering what he means with “You’re good, I’m gonna make you great”, it's decidedly creepy, a kind of threat. But she keeps at her desk, working, and at 8 pm, he buzzes her and tells her she can go home.
She collects her coat, scarf and briefcase, and walks toward the elevator. There’s the sound of him laughing and a woman giggling behind his closed office door. She stops for a minute, completely still, expressionless. Then she gets on the elevator and the door closes.
Once out on the street, she stops at a deli on the corner of the next block, where she buys a carrot muffin with a frosting swirl at the top, unwraps the plastic around it, sits down at the counter facing out the window, and takes a bite. A chunk of the muffin falls on the counter and she cleans it up with a napkin. Then she leaves, and tosses the napkin and the broken muffin into the trash.
my review of "The Assistant"
