Review: Promising Young Woman
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Promising Young Woman but hearing it was a rape/revenge film with a twist and some very strong reviews I wanted to check it out sooner rather than later. As mentioned before revenge films are a guilty pleasure of mine and I was intrigued to find out what made this one stand out. Turns out it’s everything, this is one of the ballsiest movies of the year with something to say and a hell of a way to say it.
Put simply it’s the Me Too Revenge flick we didn’t know we needed.
The film follows Cassandra ‘Cassie’ Thomas, an ex-med student who dropped out to look after her best friend Nina after Nina was raped by a classmate but due to being too drunk to remember nobody else believed her resulting in Nina’s suicide. Since then Cassie spends her time going to bars, pretending to be extremely intoxicated and when she’s preyed upon by the male patrons she confronts them about what their intentions were. It’s a vicious but solitary life for Cassie who has been stuck at home with her parents and working the same menial job at a coffee shop since dropping out and has no plans to do anything about either.
By chance Cassie has a run-in with Ryan, a former classmate with a crush on Cassie who asks her out on a date, Cassie is initially hesitant but warms to Ryan and the two take a slow friendship. It’s through Ryan than Cassie finds out that Al Monroe, the man who raped Nina, is getting married soon, with a renewed purpose for revenge in mind, Cassie sets about burning everyone she considers responsible for Nina’s suicide, from the attacker to the witnesses to the shitty school faculty to the lawyers at the case, anyone and everyone is in the firing line. But for such a destructive force, Cassie herself might end up hurting herself in the process if she’s not careful.
The destructive power of revenge has been done before, it’s a staple of the genre that you never win when you go out for blood, but the reconceptualising of revenge as a sexual assault is interesting, particularly since it’s not Cassie who got assaulted but the effects are the same, Nina reverted in on herself, Cassie lost her figuratively and then literally with her suicide. During the course of the film we see that the people who care about Cassie are losing her, she’s forgetting her own birthday, giving nobody a chance to be her friend, nothing in her life matters but the revenge and it’s dangerous. I loved how the story handled it all, it never paints Cassie as a hero, in fact some of her revenge plots are fucking twisted, but you see her perspective for so long that you understand why she’s going as far as she does, she and the film tackle everything related to sexual assault without ever using The R Word, attackers who don’t think they’ve done anything wrong, members of authority who think it’s best to remain neutral, other women who refuse to back up their friends, this is a goddamn hurricane of a film and I was hooked with each new layer the film added.
And that’s saying nothing about the ending, which not to spoil but the fact that the film not only went there but actually pulled it off that well is a testament to how great the whole product is, the whole scene with ‘Angel In The Morning’ sealed its place as one of the year’s best.
While the film is dominated by Carey Mulligan’s performance the rest of the cast pull their weight, mostly because a majority of them are playing against type, in a very deliberate move all the men that Cassie goes up against are played by actors more known for comedic or lighter roles to showcase the very real problem of ‘Nice Guys’ all don’t consider themselves rapists because they don’t force themselves onto women. Adam Brody from The O.C., Christopher Mintz-Plasse from Superbad, Max Greenfield from New Girl and Chris Lowell from Veronica Mars are all pieces of shit here and they catch you off-guard, Greenfield and Lowell especially with Lowell playing the aforementioned Al Monroe and giving him a strange but effective mix of vicious and pathetic just as any rapists should be and Greenfield playing his best man Joe who is even colder than Al himself.
The sole exception to this is Bo Burnham as Ryan, Cassie’s classmates turned potential boyfriend. This is a surprisingly straight role for the comedic Burnham but he plays it well, juxtaposing himself against the other shitheads that surround the film, granted Ryan isn’t perfect and some of his flaws do come into play later in the film but for the most part you can fully believe this is someone who Cassie can find redemption with.
Several bigger name actors pop up through the film to give it some credence, Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge play Cassie parents who both take different approaches to the emotional loss of their daughter, her mother is desperate to do anything to bring back the Cassie she used to know whereas her father – again taking the usually villainous Brown and subverting him – knows that Cassie has to come back herself and gently reminds her that she’ll always have a place with them when she does. Likewise Laverne Cox as Cassie’s coffee-shop boss Gail is a no-bullshit type who delights in embarrassing her workers with her complete lack of a filter but she’s a friend and confident to Cassie who would be happy to see her leave if only for a chance for Cassie to better herself and not waste her potential.
On the other side of the coin, Allison Brie, Connie Britton and Alfred Molina all play victims of Cassie’s wrath in different areas of post-assault life, Brie as Madison, a friend of Cassie and Nina’s who didn’t believe in Nina’s ‘Cry wolf’ moment because of her sexual history, Britton as Elizabeth, the Dean of the Med-School who didn’t take action because ‘Boys will by boys’ and Molina as Jordan, the lawyer who pressured Nina into dropping her case against Al Monroe. What’s interesting about them is that Madison and Elizabeth both have moved on from the event and barely remember what happened despite it being such a traumatising event for Nina and Cassie and as such the vengeance done against them is shocking and more than a little sadistic but justified in Cassie’s mind, whereas Jordan shows genuine remorse and guilt that throws Cassie for a loop and has her re-evaluating her stance for a good portion of the film. All three of them are in one or two scenes each but the impact they have on the story is felt throughout and all three done excellent work with what they’ve been given.
But all of them are eclipsed by Carey Mulligan who delivers probably her best performance since Shame, she plays Cassie with several shades of grey to her character and I loved every one of them. It’s important to note that while Cassie’s rage is justified and her hobby of verbally attacking ‘Nice Guys’ is a kick in the teeth that they desperately need, she’s not necessarily a nice person, there’s a coldness to her, a distance that prevents anyone from getting too close which is likely by design but it also allows her to play some really malicious mind games, Madison and Elizabeth get the absolute worst of it and I was genuinely shocked by what she does. But crucially, Cassie is always sympathetic, Mulligan channels a very female rage that I’m sure any woman has felt in a similar situation, questioning what more could’ve been done and she manages to give the revenge a focus that you’re behind 100%. It can be difficult tightrope between deplorable and likeable but Mulligan dances on it, as twisted as Cassie can be at times it’s her empathy, her small flashes of humanity still within her that keep you on her side and wish that she can be done with it so she can heal in the way Nina never got the chance to. It’s a frightening performance but the level of confidence and Fuck You attitude Mulligan brings takes it to one of the best all year.
The film is the feature debut of Emerald Fennell, previously the showrunner for Killing Eve Season 2 and sharing a lot of the same black humour, for starters the title is a twist on the case of Rapist Brock Turner (The Rapist) who was given a lenient sentence for his crimes because his swim-team career set up him to be a ‘Promising young man’. If that doesn’t tell you the angle this film is going for then nothing will. Fennell doesn’t hold back with attacking those who need attacking, the ‘Gotcha’ moment that all the predators Cassie faces off against once they realise that they’re the prey is priceless. Now to be clear the film isn’t hilarious, don’t go into this expecting a full-on comedy, but Fennell uses that shock value to put these predators on the receiving end and there’s pleasure to be had with that, it’s like watching a racist asshat getting punched in the face, too satisfying to ignore.
Already on her first feature, Fennell shows she is more than capable of balancing a number of genres through the whole film, this is billed as a revenge film and it does that exceedingly well but is also capture elements of romantic comedy thanks to Cassie and Ryan’s relationship, which gets a deliberately cheesy montage set to Paris Hilton’s ‘Stars Are Blind’ that surprisingly works thanks to the levity it brings after some heavier moments. But what Fennell shines in is how well she tackles harsh topics in a stylish manner without ever feeling like she’s talking out of place, Cassie’s journey is tragically a fantasy, no-one could do what she does and get away with it, but it’s a fantasy that needs to be brought to life, someone needs to be there to call out the hypocrisy, to calm the fears and to back up the victims. As evidenced by Brock Turner and Harvey Weinstein and countless other examples, victim blaming is a cancer to the justice system and can destroy any chance of reprieve a victim might have, that’s why it’s so important that Cassie wasn’t the one who was assaulted, she witnessed Nina’s collapse and is now suffering from the same, all-encompassing void, her small moments of catharsis are fun but do nothing to change the fact that a part of her life is gone and never coming back.
This is also why the ending works so well, it injects reality into the story but doesn’t skimp on the satisfaction it brings, it has its cake and eats it too. That flair is something that I hope Fennell can enhance with each new film because it is a breath of fresh, furious air that we need right now.
After checking out Revenge a couple years ago I never thought to see another Feminist Rape/Revenge film, but apparently the genre is growing and I’m all for it, Promising Young Woman was the kick to the nuts I needed, providing a new twist to a genre that I already enjoy and rewriting the rules to place the vengeance at the heart of a woman suffering the same way as the victim. Acting is stellar across the board with the impressive use of Against Type casting working wonders for the film’s core message and Mulligan’s central performance delivering the best Female Rage since The Bride and at the helm, Fennell showcases something gutsy, provocative, tense, empathetic and at times shockingly funny but at all times unforgettable. I fucking loved this film and I implore everyone to see it for themselves, go in as blind as you can because the kick this gives you is immense.
9/10