After landing on my Best of 2020 list with the chilling and rather emblematic The Assistant, I was definitely curious to see what writer/director/editor Kitty Green would come up with next. And sticking to her roots as a documentarian, she pulled inspiration from the doco Hotel Coolgardie to tell the story of two American backpackers who find themselves in the middle of woop woop, working at a bar until they can make enough to continue their trip. Well, if they make it that far, that is.
Films like this have the capacity to sneak up on you if you’re not careful. Ostensibly, nothing really happens in it, at least by the metric most films are measured by. It covers a single work shift of Jane, an assistant at a film studio. Over the course of its 80-minute-and-change running time, we see her do menial office work like getting coffees and fixing the printer, and there’s no substantial character change that takes place; this isn’t the kind of movie that ends with a big rousing moment for our heroine when she decides to pursue a better career or hooks up with her dream guy or anything like that. But within that framing, and anchored by Julia Garner’s performance as Jane, this film is fucking terrifying.
