It’s tough for me, as a man, to fully comprehend a film like Promising Young Woman. That’s probably going to sound awful out of context, because I loved this film, but I want to make one thing clear before I say anything else. I am not a woman (duh), and so even though I am aware of ways in which men make life for a woman a living hell, I am not on the receiving end of the constant barrage of misogynistic hatred thrown their way for every single thing they do. Just like Barbie (which I reviewed a few of weeks back) I can sympathise, but I will never know how it actually feels.
With that out of the way, there are few films that have left me as genuinely speechless as Promising Young Woman, and despite knowing the subject matter the film dealt with and even being forewarned about that mic drop of an ending, I have to say I was utterly unprepared by how much it blew me away.
Since her best friend Nina’s suicide, Cassie (Carey Mulligan) has been drifting through life seemingly without purpose. She lives with her parents, dropped out of medical school, and works a minimum wage job in a coffee shop. However, when the sun goes down Cassie frequents nightclubs, bars, and the wrong parts of town, pretending to be drunk and getting picked up by ‘nice guys’ who ‘just want to look after her’, little do they know that she’s ready to turn the tables on them at any moment and punish them for their predatory nature.
When she reconnects with classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham) sparks fly and love is in the air. But Cassie has her eyes on an old friend of Ryan’s, Al Monroe (Chris Lowell), who she believes to be the cause of Nina’s death because of his rape of Nina back in college. Seeking revenge for Nina’s death, Cassie systematically targets those involved in the rape and plans to bring Al’s life crumbling down around him.
With that out of the way, there are few films that have left me as genuinely speechless as Promising Young Woman, and despite knowing the subject matter the film dealt with and even being forewarned about that mic drop of an ending, I have to say I was utterly unprepared by how much it blew me away.
Since her best friend Nina’s suicide, Cassie (Carey Mulligan) has been drifting through life seemingly without purpose. She lives with her parents, dropped out of medical school, and works a minimum wage job in a coffee shop. However, when the sun goes down Cassie frequents nightclubs, bars, and the wrong parts of town, pretending to be drunk and getting picked up by ‘nice guys’ who ‘just want to look after her’, little do they know that she’s ready to turn the tables on them at any moment and punish them for their predatory nature.
When she reconnects with classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham) sparks fly and love is in the air. But Cassie has her eyes on an old friend of Ryan’s, Al Monroe (Chris Lowell), who she believes to be the cause of Nina’s death because of his rape of Nina back in college. Seeking revenge for Nina’s death, Cassie systematically targets those involved in the rape and plans to bring Al’s life crumbling down around him.
I’m a sucker for a good revenge story, and Promising Young Woman is one of the fiercest I’ve seen in a long time. There is so much anger contained within here, but it bubbles under the surface in a focused and controlled manner. A wise decision by director Emerald Fennell, it would have been easy to unleash this fury in a wild frenzy, but I don’t think it would have been nearly as impactful as what we get. It’s never gruesome, it never loses composure, and everything it does is done with a sweet, yet sinister smile.
I think a lot of what makes Promising Young Woman work in this way is the excellent dialogue. The way it deconstructs issues like victim blaming by putting characters in a scenario and having the tables turn on them in the way that they’re defending sexual abuse, only for them to realise how wrong they were, is genius. It’s really gripping too, one particular scene has Cassie visit the Dean of the college she used to attend (played by Connie Britton), who has turned a blind eye to multiple sexual assault cases over the years supposedly out of fear of destroying the lives of the young men accused of the crimes. This whole sequence was truly nerve-wracking, because you don’t know how far Cassie is willing to go to prove her point once her trap is sprung, using the Dean’s own words and beliefs against her once she begins to panic. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, and I loved that.
Mulligan is incredible here. It’s easy to see why she got an Oscar nomination for this role because she is absolutely mesmerising. One minute she’s convincingly drunk, the next she’s sinister, and then she’s putting up a happy and smiley façade in front of her family and cracking one liners with her boss. She’s got real range with Cassie, and she allows elements of that jokey personality to slide into her more sinister moments and that totally sells this messed up mentality she has.
Burnham is also great here. It’s a surprising casting choice, but its kind of perfect. The way the film frames Ryan is the perfect balance between just another asshole that Cassie is going to need to put in his place, and the only male character that has actual respect for women. It puts you as the viewer on edge around him because like Cassie you want to like him, he does all the right things, but something just feels off and you can’t put your finger on it.
I think a lot of what makes Promising Young Woman work in this way is the excellent dialogue. The way it deconstructs issues like victim blaming by putting characters in a scenario and having the tables turn on them in the way that they’re defending sexual abuse, only for them to realise how wrong they were, is genius. It’s really gripping too, one particular scene has Cassie visit the Dean of the college she used to attend (played by Connie Britton), who has turned a blind eye to multiple sexual assault cases over the years supposedly out of fear of destroying the lives of the young men accused of the crimes. This whole sequence was truly nerve-wracking, because you don’t know how far Cassie is willing to go to prove her point once her trap is sprung, using the Dean’s own words and beliefs against her once she begins to panic. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, and I loved that.
Mulligan is incredible here. It’s easy to see why she got an Oscar nomination for this role because she is absolutely mesmerising. One minute she’s convincingly drunk, the next she’s sinister, and then she’s putting up a happy and smiley façade in front of her family and cracking one liners with her boss. She’s got real range with Cassie, and she allows elements of that jokey personality to slide into her more sinister moments and that totally sells this messed up mentality she has.
Burnham is also great here. It’s a surprising casting choice, but its kind of perfect. The way the film frames Ryan is the perfect balance between just another asshole that Cassie is going to need to put in his place, and the only male character that has actual respect for women. It puts you as the viewer on edge around him because like Cassie you want to like him, he does all the right things, but something just feels off and you can’t put your finger on it.
Everything looks and sound great too. The visuals strike this great balance between light and colourful ‘safe spaces’ for Cassie which include the coffee shop and her parents house, which then contrast really well with the more claustrophobic and darker dangerous places that Cassie inhabits when on the hunt. The soundtrack is also really great with some excellent uses of licensed songs from artists like Charli XCX, Paris Hilton, and a particularly haunting slowed down instrumental version of Britney Spears’ Toxic for the climax of the film. It all combines to build something that feels distinctly feminine, but feels dangerous and twisted, exactly like Cassie’s character.
It's tough not to address the controversial ending to the film, but the last twenty minutes will either make or break the entire thing for you. For me I think it hit the nail on the head in a way that I could never have seen coming, and perfectly got across the argument the film had been making all along. It genuinely left me speechless, it’s absolutely not where I felt the film was going at all, and yet I think it was exactly what was needed for Cassie’s character. There was a feeling I had of ‘Wait. Are they allowed to do this? Surely, they can’t do this right?’ but that’s part of the beauty of Promising Young Woman, it’s incredibly bold with its statement, and whilst that may be upsetting for some viewers, or even enraging, I think that’s exactly the kind of reaction a film like this needed in order to get its message across.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch Promising Young Woman again, which is a shame because it was an incredible film. It’s a tough watch with a sucker punch of an ending that absolutely won’t land the same time on a second viewing. But it is absolutely a film that needs to be seen. Mulligan’s performance is phenomenal, the dialogue is just perfect, and I love the way the film looks and sounds. One of the most gripping and ingenious thrillers of the decade so far, what a ride!
It's tough not to address the controversial ending to the film, but the last twenty minutes will either make or break the entire thing for you. For me I think it hit the nail on the head in a way that I could never have seen coming, and perfectly got across the argument the film had been making all along. It genuinely left me speechless, it’s absolutely not where I felt the film was going at all, and yet I think it was exactly what was needed for Cassie’s character. There was a feeling I had of ‘Wait. Are they allowed to do this? Surely, they can’t do this right?’ but that’s part of the beauty of Promising Young Woman, it’s incredibly bold with its statement, and whilst that may be upsetting for some viewers, or even enraging, I think that’s exactly the kind of reaction a film like this needed in order to get its message across.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch Promising Young Woman again, which is a shame because it was an incredible film. It’s a tough watch with a sucker punch of an ending that absolutely won’t land the same time on a second viewing. But it is absolutely a film that needs to be seen. Mulligan’s performance is phenomenal, the dialogue is just perfect, and I love the way the film looks and sounds. One of the most gripping and ingenious thrillers of the decade so far, what a ride!