Promising Young Woman (2020)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Go into this as blind and spoiler-free as you can. Promising Young Woman is one of the best films of 2020.
Carey Mulligan gives a career-best performance as Cassie, with Emerald Fennell’s extraordinary screenplay making this a film quite unlike anything you have seen in quite some time - if not ever before.
A film designed for a lengthy post-film discussion; Promising Young Woman is not going to play nice with viewers - it will upset you and knock you off balance - but as a wickedly subversive piece of art, this is exhilarating cinema and the arrival of a powerful new voice in Emerald Fennell.
NO
Trigger warning for victims of sexual assault, suicide, and domestic violence. These topics are covered throughout the film, making Promising Young Woman a potentially tough watch for some viewers.
I think it is fair to say that the stance this movie takes will be dismissed by a certain wing of the viewing audience that likely needs to listen and hear the messaging the most.
If you find yourself angry at Cassie after the prologue scene, you need far more help than a movie like this has the potential to offer.
OUR REVIEW
Admittedly a movie that will divide audiences with its very direct and pointed commentaries on women, their power and agency, their sexuality, rape culture, sexual assault trauma, the motivations of men, toxic masculinity, and the actions of men when challenged in the presence of strong females, Promising Young Woman dares you to hate it. Dares you to be mad. Dares you to dislike its main character. Then it lights a cigarette, draws a wicked smile, and leaves you to process and consider everything you have just witnessed, as a number of characters sit in disbelief over a reckoning they never anticipated.
Writer/director Emerald Fennell’s debut film serves as a clarion call to so many movies and stories of the past, which freely hand people a pass for immoral and horrible behavior. With an absence of F’s left to give, Promising Young Woman weaponizes humor, subversion, and a staunch refusal to forgive and forget in working its way through a complex and multi-tiered story of the unspoken realities men and women face in society.
Carey Mulligan stars as Cassie, in a remarkable performance, as a just-turned-30-year-old barista by day and clubgoer on the weekends. She drinks to excess most nights out and waits to see what men may step up to take advantage of her in an inebriated state. Unashamedly, Cassie goes home with a different guy each night and then wakes up and replays her days again and again.
Living with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown), Cassie is a medical school dropout, wickedly smart, and her life is something of an enigma Mom and Dad. There is more here than meets the eye with Cassie, but to say too much more spoils one of the more provocative and pot-stirring films of 2020.
You will want to go into this as blind and unaware as possible.
Fennell, who cut her teeth as a writer and showrunner on the series “Killing Eve,” holds nothing back in letting us understand what Cassie’s motivations are in the opening moments. Rather than shine a spotlight on her actions as if to exploit her decisions, we embed with her and get to know Cassie through a series of boozy interactions in and outside of the clubs she frequents, and with customers at the local coffee house where she works and banters with manager and best friend Gail (Laverne Cox).
One customer surprises her: Ryan (Bo Burnham), a former med school colleague who is tickled to run into Cassie and is up to the challenge of exchanging cynical digs and flirty interactions. As Cassie and Ryan circle one another, Promising Young Woman keeps us in Cassie’s mind – watching every move, analyzing every word, trying to see if there’s ulterior motives at play on all sides.
Fennell mixes in humor with trauma, and montages and memorable sequences (Paris Hilton’s “Stars are Blind” song will never be the same song for me ever again), alongside moments of deeply felt emotion. As we learn more about Cassie’s reasoning behind her decisions and lifestyle, one character simply and profoundly tells her, with exasperation and sadness, “you got to let this go.”
The pop-music song score, which also includes a cutting and metallic take on Britney Spears’ “Toxic,” along with darker-themed pop tunes by a slate of upcoming female vocalists, underscores the blissful dichotomy of multiple realities which surrounds many of these characters. Fennell gives everything to us. Her talents as a storyteller allow her to create new ways to continually shock and surprise us.
Mulligan teeters on a powderkeg of rage and revenge. What drives Cassie, and the reasons why she is drawn back into a medical school world she left behind has diabolical, but cogent intent. As pieces of the story start locking together, a bigger picture emerges, and Fennell accelerates us into the trauma and pain that envelopes so many of the characters we meet along the way.
It is absolutely a cliché to state that “you have never seen a movie like this,” but, I mean, you probably have never seen a movie quite like this. Where it starts, where it ends, and the journey between points A and B will take you on an emotional rollercoaster and drop your jaw more than once.
Promising Young Woman is simply a force. The film is messy and unkempt in one moment, polished and perfect in the next. In exchanging drinks, one-liners, concocting schemes, sending perfectly timed texts, or letting down her guard for a rare moment, Mulligan’s enigmatic personality is balanced wonderfully within subjects and themes bigger than merely one character or one performance.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown, Connie Britton, Alfred Molina, Chris Lowell, Adam Brody, Max Greenfield, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Sam Richardson, Molly Shannon, Angela Zhou.
Director: Emerald Fennell
Written by: Emerald Fennell
Release Date: December 25, 2020
Focus Features