Written and directed by Kitty Green
Starring Julia Garner, Matthew Macfadyen, Jon Orsini, Noah Robbins
Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes
MPA rating: R

by Jaime Davis, The Fixer

Last Friday, I started my morning like any other. At 7:00 am, after three alarms did what they needed to do, I slowly shuffled my way to the kitchen, sleepily scrolled through my phone’s notifications, sent my fiancée a good morning text, and got ready to start my work day. I usually put something on in the background while making breakfast; typically I watch The Today Show on my phone, but lately I’ve been listening to The New York Times podcast, The Daily. On this particular Friday, New York Times reporter Megan Twohey interviewed Donna Rotunno, one of the lead defense attorneys for Harvey Weinstein. What was so striking about this interview was that Twohey (along with her reporting partner Jodi Kantor) wrote a pretty explosive book, She Said, about investigating and breaking the Weinstein story which eventually led to the creation of the #MeToo movement. But, most disconcerting, was what Rotunno said, or not-so-subtly hinted at, as it relates to victims and accusers. At one point, Twohey asked Rotunno if she had ever been the victim of a sexual assault. Rotunno said she had not, and then followed it up with “because I would never put myself in that position.” In that moment, I yelled at my phone and clumsily spilled my coffee all at the same time. Rotunno’s outright victim-shaming shocked the typical calm of my morning routine. I was most certainly awake after that.