Critic Reviews

Working Woman is more than a feature that makes compelling drama out of workplace sexual harassment; it’s an excellent work by any standard, a subtle and insightful character-driven drama that will compel anyone who cares about the interplay of personalities on-screen.

Michal Aviad’s film forcefully brings home a reality that many of us have been aware of only intellectually.

The debate around sexual harassment is one many are having around the world, far beyond hashtags and press releases. Working Woman is a part of that global and cultural conversation, yet it never loses that personal focus of one woman’s experience.

To its credit, Working Woman is laser-focused on its theme. There are no superfluous characters or side-plots. There’s no best friend to confide in, no hilarious sidekick. There’s just a woman who feels all alone like there’s no one she can trust, no one who will understand her.

The picture is a slow-burning but ultimately empowering drama that works despite a lack of the bigger, louder, more outwardly emotional moments it could have succumbed to.

This second narrative feature by Israeli documentarian Michal Aviad is a strong drama that eschews melodramatic contrivance, making its points via cool (yet sometimes squirm-inducing) observation.

Despite its surface-level placidity, the Israeli feature Working Woman unfolds like a psychological thriller — a procedural that, as it tightens its grip, captures how workplace sexual harassment slowly takes over one woman’s life.

Without stooping to the uselessness of style, Working Woman makes its points simply by staying with Orna as she proceeds through stages of shock, humiliation, self-loathing, self-censorship, all emotions her husband finds difficult to understand and which the Bennys of the world rely on.

This story of workplace abuse and its fallout could just as well take place in New York, Istanbul, Mumbai — or any other city. Orna is Everywoman. Like many other women in her shoes, she emerges scarred, but stronger and wiser.

Every moment indicates deep compassion for Orna, and anyone else who might be driven to see a multi-layered message movie for the #MeToo era.