SHREDDED NERVES
KITTY GREEN IS MOVED the most by the audience responses.
At film festival Q&As and after screenings they queue to tell her what her debut fiction film The Assistant has meant to them. How they were, like the film’s protagonist Jane, stuck in a toxic work environment, carrying out banal tasks, shouted at, belittled, overlooked and ignored.
“A lot of people respond strongly,” Green says. She’s in Berlin, where The Assistant has just been screened to rave reviews, an experience she has found almost overwhelming. “People really seem to get what we’re trying to say. I’ve had people grab my arm and want to touch me, which is very emotional, and others who have stood there quietly and then started talking about what it meant to them. I’ve had male assistants say they had a female boss and a similar environment to that depicted in the film, and people who weren’t in the film industry, people in cosmetic companies, even the yacht industry, tell me about their experiences.”
Sometimes those experiences cross generations. “I even had a mother and son where he was saying to her, ‘When I was calling you and saying that everything was fine and you were telling me it was a good job opportunity — this is what it was really like.’ It’s kind of shocking to learn how many people identify with it. It makes you sad. But at the same time, people keep saying that they’re grateful to be seen.”
Just an hour before, Harvey Weinstein has been found guilty of third degree rape and committing a criminal sexual act in the first degree. His shadow looms large throughout our interview, not least because has been repeatedly described as ‘the first great movie of the #MeToo era’, a phrase the 35-year-old Green is not entirely comfortable with.
