You too?

The #MeToo movement is a bit back burner now that other crises are bubbling over, but it is beginning to bear fruit in thematic films now coming out, on which I will comment under this rubric.  (Before moving on, let me go back and re-recommend The Tale by Jennifer Fox, one of the very best films of 2018.)

First up is All is Well (MC-80, NFX), which Netflix has mistranslated from the German.  Eva Trobisch’s film school graduation project should be “All Good,” which is what the protagonist, dazzlingly played by Aenne Schwarz, says whenever anyone asks how it’s going, even after she has been raped.  With unacknowledged PTSD, she goes about her business as if nothing were wrong, even when she finds out her new boss is actually her rapist.  As her life disintegrates around her, and she shows all sorts of repressed symptoms, it remains “All good.”  Until the devastating truth descends upon her.  This film is up in her face, quite literally, proceeding in tight close-ups, and shards of narrative that abandon context and continuity, but cumulatively are quite clear.  Worth seeing, if you can take it – trigger warning hereby proffered.

With a different approach but similar affect and effect, The Assistant (MC-79, Hulu) traces one day in the life of an entry-level underling in a Manhattan film production office clearly modeled on Miramax, even though the unnamed Harvey Weinstein character is only glimpsed fleetingly through an open door, or heard muffled through a closed one.  Played with tight control but great feeling by Julia Garner, the assistant arrives at the office pre-dawn and goes about her menial and demeaning chores with steely resolve, as the office culture gradually becomes clear, geared to enabling the depredations of the boss.  Sexual abuse is only one of the degradations suffered in this work environment.  When our girl, who looks like a young teen, a pixie of iron, takes her suspicions and concerns to HR, the head (played with delicious unction by Matthew Macfadyen) warns her not to sabotage her career hopes and not to worry because “You’re not his type.”  This is the debut feature from writer/director Kitty Green, who made the estimable Casting JonBenet and other documentaries.  That documentary background comes through in the meticulous delineation of office life, with its unspoken codes and power dynamics.  To me this film was epitomized in the scene in which the assistant uses a copier to print out head shots of aspiring actresses for the boss, as the photos pile up in the tray, as a visual correlative to the serial crimes of the top dog.  This is a horror story of everyday life, relying on suffocating detail and observation, rather than melodrama.

Athlete A (MC-85, NFX), the well-put-together documentary by wife-and-husband team Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk, details the abusive climate at U.S.A. Gymnastics that emerged in the trial of the longtime team doctor, Larry Nassar.  Maggie Nichols was the title character, in a lawsuit that opened up a tidal wave of corroborating testimony, in which 500 women and girls came forward with their own tales of sexual interference.  An investigative team at the Indianapolis Star broke the story, and pursued it until the bad doctor was sentenced to 120 years in jail, and other USAG officials followed him.  After the story came out, former gymnasts came forward to testify in their own names, and at Nassar’s sentencing, many were able to confront him directly with the harm he had done.  Weaving together footage from old matches and coverage, with the on-camera memories of gymnasts and parents, and the unfolding of the journalistic and legal investigation, this film is clear, concise, contextual – and outraging.

It led me back to another documentary that I had skipped, Roll Red Roll (MC-83, NFX), about a heinous rape by high school football players in Steubenville, Ohio.  It’s not a bad film, maybe even essential, but in comparison with Athlete A, it seems slapdash and inconsequential, even if horrific and timely.