Promising Young Woman is a darkly comic revenge film from writer/director, Emerald Fennell, who is making her debut here after working on several high profile shows like The Crown and Killing Eve. It stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie, a woman who has dropped out of med school and ended up living with her parents while working at a coffee shop after experiencing something traumatic. At night, she goes out to bars where she acts drunk, eventually getting picked up by some guy who will take advantage of her seemingly uninhibited state, only for her to confront them about it later.
At first it all seems random, but we soon learn of a connection with most of these guys. They all were involved in the tragedy that resulted in her leaving med school, which turns out to be the rape of her best friend, Nina, at a frat party. And it isn’t just the guys she’s after, she even find people who dismissed the case, people who didn’t take the report seriously, and a friend, Madison (Alison Brie) who didn’t believe her. While in this crusade, she meets an old classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham), and she is herself confronted with the kind of human connection that she has avoided since that tragedy.
I am curious if Fennell was in anyway influenced by some of the South Korean revenge movies that came to prominence during Korean New Wave of the 2000s. While this film is nowhere near as violent or as gruesome as those, it shares a provocativeness and playfulness with its tone that has more in common with those films than anything you would see in an American revenge film. It is bold, daring, and often very unpredictable, and despite the heavy subject matter, it all made for a surprisingly entertaining experience that nonetheless inspires thought and conversation, which is already a rarity.
The film is, as you’d guess, a take down of rape culture and toxic masculinity. However, this is also where the film runs into its big central flaw. When it comes to issues like this, it’s important to recognize how this is less about individual problems, and more about how the system often protects abusers. Fennell is definitely smart enough to incorporate that like in one scene where Cassie confronts a school official played by Connie Britton who did very little to help Nina because she had to give the main perpetrator the benefit of the doubt. But at the end of the day, this is still a story about one individual righting the wrongs of the past by taking down the handful of people involved, and considering how it ends (which I’m sure will be the most divisive element), I don’t know if this will be seen as cathartic for people who have actually experienced this kind of stuff in their past.
What I’m sure everyone will agree on is that Carey Mulligan is absolutely brilliant in the role. She carries the film extraordinarily well, capturing the anger that rages under the surface while looking calm and collected. It’s the sort of acting that requires her to hide a lot, emphasizing body language and the gazes of her eyes, it’s just incredibly stellar stuff she’s doing here. And the supporting players are strong too. Aside from the ones already mentioned, you have folks like Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Alfred Molina, Molly Shannon, Sam Richardson, Adam Brody, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and Chris Lowell, all of whom get a moment to shine, even if they only show up for one or two scenes. But it is ultimately Mulligan’s show, and it’s her performance that will stick with you long after seeing it.
Obviously, Promising Young Woman doesn’t necessarily provide answers on how a system that routinely dismisses the concerns of the victims while elevating abusers could be dismantled, but I don’t think the film is aiming for that, nor do I think it is necessarily obligated to provide one. The rage of Cassie is the rage of the film, and that rage is deeply felt. It’s a film with a lot on its mind, and Emerald Fennell takes big swings in order to get those ideas across to the audience, even at the risk of upsetting its audience. As a genre exercise, it’s beautifully made, full of evocative and colorful production design, it’s thrilling to watch unfold, and it’s darkly comic streaks are genuinely amusing without losing the weight of its themes. But don’t just take it from me, I’d highly encourage readers to find reviews from female critics, who are likely more equipped to tackle the ideas behind the film than I am. To start, I have links for reviews from some great critics I follow that you can check out – from Monica Castillo, Valerie Complex, Alison Willmore, Angie Han, DarkSkyLady, and Jourdain Searles. As far as my overall feeling goes, I enjoyed the film a lot, and I hope it can inspire some nuanced discussions, and I hope Fennell is given more opportunities to explore her craft in the future. Plus, it’s got one hell of a soundtrack.
Promising Young Woman is now out in theaters.