Cast: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Connie Britton
Director: Emerald Fennell
Writer: Emerald Fennell
If you’ve seen any of the advertising for Promising Young Woman, you’ll probably go in expecting a 70’s style rape-revenge exploitation fantasy flick. And the thing about this film is that it’s not not that. Promising Young Woman is decidedly a rape-revenge fantasy, but one that subverts both the revenge and the fantasy. It’s about a woman trying to correct a gross injustice that should never have happened and should definitely never have been allowed to remain unpunished and forgotten, but it understands that the justice she seeks is one that isn’t obtainable for most victims and survivors of sexual assault, not with the world the way it is today, and that even then revenge seldom brings people the catharsis that they seek. It’s a rape-revenge story made for 2020, where the #MeToo movement has propelled sexual harassment and sexual assault into an issue that can no longer be dismissed or ignored, but where the structures and cultures that allow and enable sexual predators to exploit women without consequence remain unchanged. It doesn’t entirely stick the landing, but then what movie could in a world where the themes of patriarchal oppression and sexual violence it attempts to examine remain contentious, messy, and unresolved matters? Like it or hate it, it is a testament to Fennell’s film that it cannot be treated with indifference, something that far too many women’s stories have met.
The movie’s heroine is Cassie (Carey Mulligan), the namesake of a Trojan priestess cursed to know the future but to never have her prophecies believed. The details are kept vague, but we piece together that she was once a medical student who dropped out following the rape and death of her best friend Nina (it is implied that she took her own life after her case was dropped by the authorities). Since then Cassie has worked in a low-paying café job while living with her parents Stanley (Clancy Brown) and Susan (Jennifer Coolidge) and, at age thirty, shows no intent or interest in moving on with her life. Instead she has devoted herself towards enacting a revenge of sorts, even if only a symbolic or nominal one. Every other night, she’ll get dressed and made up and go to some bar or club where she’ll act leglessly drunk, so drunk that some nice guy will eventually swing by to check in on her. This inevitably ends up with her in the guy’s home where he plainly, fully intends to take advantage of the beautiful woman who can barely remain conscious or string a sentence together. That’s when she’ll switch gears and ask in her most innocently threatening voice “What are you doing?” What happens next is better seen than explained, but viewers who expect divine bloody fury akin to I Spit on Your Grave should brace for disappointment.
So, to summarise, Cassie spends her nights placing herself in vulnerable, compromising positions with predatory men without an apparent means of protecting herself or anybody else knowing where she is, something that no woman in her right mind would ever dream of doing. This is where the revenge angle starts turning on its head. As satisfying as it is to watch Cassie take these would-be rapists, played by famous nerdy nice guys such as Adam Brody and Christopher Mintz-Plasse, down a peg, the film understands that what she’s doing is reckless, ill-conceived, and ultimately ineffective in the face of the ingrained systemic injustices she’s fighting. Yet what else can she do? It’s not like the police or the courts are going to do anything. Mulligan is terrific playing the emotional devastation that Cassie has suffered and has since learnt to channel into cool, cold-blooded rage. She never screams or seethes because she knows that all she has to do to scare these guys is smile innocently yet knowingly in her unapologetically girlish way and ask the questions that she knows will illicit the feeble excuses that even they know are bullshit. “I thought we had a connection” says one to the woman he thought was nearly comatose a minute before. “Why do you bitches have to ruin everything?” says another in an attempt to spin the blame. And, of course, there’s always the ever-classic “I’m a nice guy”.
There are tonal clashes and even mixed messages throughout Promising Young Woman, but then that sort of comes part and parcel when delving into this territory, at least to an extent. As popular media is slowly (very slowly) moving past the point where depictions of rape are employed purely as gratuitous scenes of titillating degradation or as rhetorical devices in the backstories of vengeful (usually male) heroes, the critical question of how to thoughtfully and sensitively handle depictions and stories of rape remains an open one. There are no on-screen portrayals of rape in this film, but there are several stomach-churning scenes of attempted rape and misogyny and one horrendously unflinching moment of violence being inflicted on a woman. But of course these are ideas that should turn one’s stomach and leave one feeling horrified. The pertinent question isn’t so much whether these kinds of scenes should be depicted in cinema, but rather to what end? Fennell wades into a lot of troubling territory throughout, but it’s plain to see that she isn’t doing so for the sake of it; she’s making a point. She’s defiantly and confidently making a point about how willing people today, perpetrators, witnesses, and enablers alike, still are to buy into the same prevailing patriarchal narrative to avoid confronting uncomfortable truths. Phrases such as “she was into it”, “he said-she said”, and “we were just kids” are uttered and shown to be the flimsy excuses that they are.
But that doesn’t make Cassie some badass ‘yaas queen!’ warrior woman hellbent on her righteously vengeful rampage. Rape culture is complicated and the level of grief, trauma, and damage brought about is not easily processed. While we sympathise with Cassie’s pain and anger, agree with her grievances, and perhaps even root for her to succeed, her methods and motivations still give us pause. When an old classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham) mentions that the guy responsible for destroying the life of her friend Nina is back home and getting married, this initiates a plan to get back at him and all those who witnessed or else turned a blind eye to his crime. To this end, Cassie does some pretty heinous, if not outright reprehensible, things that can feel less vindictive than they do malignant. When she acts against her targets, which include two women played by Alison Brie and Connie Brtton (the casting in this film is so good!), there’s a sense that she isn’t so much righting wrongs as she is perpetuating those same wrongs. There are moments when Cassie feels less sure about the rightness of her actions, especially in one scene (albeit a clumsily written and performed one) where she meets a former lawyer played by Alfred Molina. When she sees what effect her vengeance has on her victims and how petty and cruel they all seem even given the grievous nature of their crime, she wonders whether what she does is even worth it.
Fennell does a splendid job of conveying this ambivalence through her direction. The film is coloured throughout in this bright bubble-gum/candy flavoured aesthetic that is sweet to the point of sickliness. Everything we see and hear, from Cassie’s flowery dresses and wavy blonde hair to the casting of TV boyfriends like Max Greenfield (New Girl) and Chris Powell (Private Practice (and both, incidentally, in Veronica Mars)), and the Paris Hilton-Britney Spears needle drops, speak to a candid, unembarrassed, prevailing girlishness. It all stands at once for a ringing, defiant affirmation of femininity, which is above all what patriarchal rape culture threatens to destroy, but it also plays into the conflicting emotions of the story that unfolds. How can the world be as bright, cheerful, and colourful as it is, when the most beautiful and incredible person that Cassie ever knew has been discarded and forgotten by all except her? The artificiality of the aesthetic also primes the viewer to suspend their disbelief as the film approaches an ending that pushes the boundaries of plausibility, given the reality of how attempts to hold rapists to account for their crimes tend to play out in the real world. Then again, it is a bold and perplexing climax that the film ends on and, like many a perplexing film, how it plays to you is going to be shaped by what kind of movie you think Promising Young Woman is.
There’s much to be said and written about that ending, which can be read as anything from triumphant to tragic to transgressive. Certainly no consensus can be reached on it; it’s too daring and provocative a film for that. Promising Young Woman is not an easy film to watch. It verges often into uncomfortable material, it is often at odds with itself, and its themes cannot be broken neatly into tidy pieces that make it clear what the audience is supposed to feel and take away. While there are parts of the film I didn’t like, they feel too intrinsic to the overall vision in all of its messiness and ambition to be detached from the aspects that I did like. More than that, Promising Young Woman is a film that cannot be dismissed and forgotten about. It’s such a captivating film and it lingers for so long after viewing that one is compelled to have an emotional reaction, even if it’s a negative one. In that way, Promising Young Woman might be the #MeToo movie we’ve been waiting for. It doesn’t offer simplistic solutions, hollow platitudes, or passive chastisement; the film is damning in its condemnation, ferocious in its conviction, and brazen in its boldness. It is every bit as tangled, confounding, and imperfect as the world that necessitated its very existence.
★★★★
Aled Warren Films 