Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 53 minutes
Director: Emerald Fennell
Quick Impressions:
We actually paid $20 to rent this movie for 48 hours, not a bad value since we’ve already watched it twice. Way back when life was simpler and we still went to the movies every week, we saw the trailer for Promising Young Woman in the theater, and I was hooked. Since the pandemic here kicked into full swing, I’ve avoided paying full price simply to rent a movie. Paying $20 to own a movie (even sight unseen) seems reasonable enough, but why rent movies you can buy later when so much is streaming free? Well here’s why–because you’re so excited to see a movie that you just can’t wait!
Back when we saw the trailer, we fully intended to buy movie theater tickets to see Promising Young Woman. And now it’s opened to such critical acclaim. Last week, I had already decided to watch it next because Carey Mulligan’s lead performance is generating such Oscar buzz. And since then, she’s been nominated for both a Golden Globe and a SAG award. Plus the film’s been nominated for Golden Globes for Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay. Granted, the Golden Globe nominations were even stranger than usual this year, but I think the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was right about this particular film.
I absolutely love Promising Young Woman. As I said, we’ve already watched it a second time to show it to my dad and my daughter, and I would happily watch it again and again and again. Part of me longs to write about it or teach it (and when I used to do that, I’d usually watch the movie on an endless loop for 24 hours first). It’s probably my favorite film of this awards season so far. (What a year, though! It seems like the films nominated for awards were practically the only ones that actually came out!)
If I were still involved in academia, I’d definitely find a way to teach this film. The challenge I face in this review is how to write about it without spoilers. This is one I’d love to dig into and analyze to death. But I can’t even tell you what I’d like to teach it along with without giving away too much of the movie.
So what can I say? First of all, a trigger warning. One of this film’s central concerns is sexual assault. If that topic is difficult for you to think about, you probably don’t want to watch Promising Young Woman. Most graphic incidents are alluded to rather than seen but the entire movie is about men taking advantage of intoxicated women in various ways. Almost every scene of the movie deals with this topic to some degree. Survivors may find it cathartic or traumatic. And the feelings it stirs may sneak up on you because of the movie’s frequent shifts in tone, mood, even genre. So if you are working through sexual assault related trauma yourself, proceed with caution because Promising Young Woman is full of emotional twists and turns and may pull the rug out from under you when you least expect it.
I mentioned shifts in genre, and that’s really why I love the movie so much. We don’t actually learn the film’s genre until its end. It has the kind of ending that makes you realize, “Ohh! Until now, I haven’t truly appreciated what I’ve seen. I was gravely mistaken about the genre.” The thing is, the film appears to have multiple genres, to change genre as it progresses, kind of like last year’s Parasite. But when you get to the end, you suddenly realize what it’s actually been the entire time. I would love to teach Promising Young Woman in the classroom alongside certain other works. It’s beautifully written by first time feature film director Emerald Fennell.
I’m sure before the Oscars happen, Promising Young Woman will become available for purchase. Then I’ll buy it and watch it again.
The Good:
Three things stand out about this film.
1. Its excellent story, so neat, well crafted, sharp, funny yet sad, socially relevant yet possessing a certain timeless quality.
2. Its superb, tricky, nuanced leading performance by Carey Mulligan.
3. Its clever and thoughtful use of music, particularly pop music.
Perhaps the most delightful thing about the movie is how cleverly (and with such thorough commitment) it plays on the societal trope of victim shaming. As one character explains in explicit detail in the film, when a woman accuses a man of sexual assault, a common tactic used by his defense team is to drag her reputation through the mud. She was raped, huh? Well, was she dressed provocatively and/or intoxicated at the time? Or was she dressed provocatively and/or intoxicated at any other time? Was she promiscuous in general? Or did she appear to be promiscuous in general? Did she perhaps have a malicious motive for accusing this man? Or could a jury potentially be convinced that she had a malicious motive?
Surely we are all familiar with the way society often blames victims of sexual assault. What I love about this film is the way it uses equally familiar cinematic cues to encourage us to confuse victims and villains. This smear campaign nearly works in convincing us to mistake trauma for villainy. It leaves us thoroughly disoriented for quite some time. By the time we figure out just what exactly is going on, the movie’s (and the characters’) efforts to depict villainy as victimhood play as satire, bitterly dark humor. We might marvel that people doing truly evil things can portray themselves as victims, but we can also shake our heads and recall everything we know about our society and believe that they could convince themselves that they have not wronged, but have been wronged, no matter how vile their crimes. It’s brilliantly done.
The movie opens like some slick, compelling thriller. Then it morphs into a quirky romantic comedy. And I won’t tell you how it ends up. (The genre it settles on in the end has actually been the movie’s genre all along. We, the audience, have simply been too disoriented and had too little information to understand.)
But while all of this exciting, eye-catching, sometimes lurid, darkly hilarious stuff is going on, the film is also a heart-breaking drama, a character study of someone working through profound trauma. The same story could be told in a much less flashy, compelling way. The longer we watch, the more we understand that the whole time, the protagonist has been playing a character (not just with people she targets, but with everyone, with herself and with us, too) because she’s so broken that she must keep putting on a face in order to survive.
So at the heart of this compelling movie (loaded with lurid plot points and inventive use of pop music) there’s also a quiet story of a woman in psychological crisis.
This gives Carey Mulligan quite a lot to do as Cassie, the film’s protagonist. (Her name is actually Cassandra, which seems deeply significant to me given her obsession with truth telling). Mulligan must play someone who is working through a major trauma, essentially falling apart. But at the same time, she masks this ongoing crisis with the pretense of near apathy. After a while, though, she does begin to improve…perhaps too quickly. Then she ends up even more disturbed than before, though perhaps with greater clarity and keener focus. While she is wrestling with all of this, Cassie also pretends to be a string of different people in order to deceive and entrap others. Not only does she try to deceive others, but as she’s deceiving them, she must also deceive herself. Her adventures enable her to keep going. She’s essentially role playing her way through life, seeing herself as someone dangerous and powerful to avoid looking at her powerlessness, to keep from thinking about how deeply she’s been hurt and how easily she could be hurt again. Mulligan is so captivating in this multi-layered role that she deserves to win an Oscar, and I hope she does. (I would also be happy with a win for Viola Davis, though, and I haven’t yet seen Frances McDormand who is one of my favorite actresses.)
The soundtrack in this film is also incredible. The songs themselves are fine. (They’re mostly pop songs.) It’s the way they’re used that makes such an impact. For one thing, Cassie’s life seems to be to some degree a self-protecting fantasy, so it would need a soundtrack as any other movie would. It’s the movie that’s playing in her head. And that is often how people in general think of popular songs, as personal soundtracks. I particularly like the instrumental arrangement of Brittney Spears’s “Toxic.” The use of “Something Wonderful” is pretty special, too. (That’s probably my least favorite song from The King and I, but I like it here.) The weird interlude in which the Paris Hilton song plays (the drug store dance/love montage) feels so surreal for such a long time that my husband and I initially wondered if it were a dream sequence.
Though Mulligan essentially carries the movie, Promising Young Woman also has a supporting cast full of famous faces–Adam Brody, Jennifer Coolidge, Laverne Cox, Clancy Brown, Molly Shannon, Connie Britton, Christopher Mintz-Plasse. Particular standouts are Alfred Molina in a brief but key role, Alison Brie as an old friend who hasn’t changed (yet), and Bo Burnham as Cassie’s sometime love interest, a pediatrician gifted with charmingly awkward humor.
Most Oscar-Worthy Moment, Carey Mulligan:
When Cassie reminisces about her oldest friend near the very end of the film, Mulligan’s performance comes together perfectly. This short monologue finally reveals the crux of the character’s suffering and what motivates her. It seems ready made for use as an awards show clip (except that it might reveal too much).
Best Scene Visually/Aurally:
The scene that jumps out at me is the one in which “Something Wonderful” plays in the background. That’s Lady Thiang’s song from The King and I. In high school, I went through a phase of adoring The King and I, but I was never crazy about that song by the king’s head wife. It’s not that I found her servile or objected on any kind of principle (exactly). I just thought it was a boring song, but in this movie, it pairs perfectly with the scene over which it plays, bringing a new and unexpected vitality to both the song and the scene. I keep thinking of Cassie’s fingernails.
Best Action Sequence:
I’m fond of the scene in which Cassie pretends to be a lost make-up artist. She takes such pleasure in deceiving her target.
Best Scene:
The best scene comes at the end, but discussing what makes it work is nearly impossible without spoilers, so I’ll go with the next best scene, Cassie’s surprising visit with Alfred Molina. Of course, he’s an excellent actor, but Mulligan truly shines here as she’s met with something unexpected. I also love the, “You’ve developed a conscience? Why you must be insane,” aspect, a dark (and familiar) commentary on our society.
The Negatives:
Thinking about Promising Young Woman fills me with a weird glee. For some reason, I find the movie more exciting than most other Oscar fare this year. This movie stands out. I love the film and find no fault whatsoever with Mulligan’s performance. Nor do I see any problems with her hotness level (which apparently was not high enough for a Variety critic who has since apologized). (It was kind of a lame apology, though, since he then all but unapologized in another publication. I’ve read his explanation, and I believe him that it was not his intention to imply that Mulligan wasn’t “hot enough” for the part. I also understand why he thought of Margot Robbie because she is one of the film’s producers, and Cassie does dress not unlike Harley Quinn at one point. But I think his comments show a lack of appreciation for how the film works all the same. (And I disagree with his seeming premise that being a gay man would preclude him from judging and insulting a woman based on her appearance.) I do believe him, though, when he contends that this was all blown up way out of proportion to generate sympathetic publicity for Mulligan and the film during awards season. That he felt he had to point out something so obvious again lowers his judgment in my estimation, however. (Also, I think it’s not a great look to apologize and then basically say, “But actually if you were offended by what I wrote, that’s your fault for being dumb,” especially when the offending review was about a movie focused on how men disrespect and harm women and then blame the victims.) Fortunately for him, my opinion does not matter much, and he remains far more successful than I am.
(Let’s face it. We would all be hotter if we were Margot Robbie! But Robbie got her Oscar nominations because of her acting ability, not her hotness, and acting ability seems almost certain to earn Mulligan another nomination this year, too.)
My only slight criticism of the film is that I find it almost shocking that Cassie’s activities do not arouse further suspicion (and perhaps even police involvement) sooner. The episode with the dean ought to be enough to get the police involved. I understand that the dean is trying to avoid scandal, but if someone pulled something like that with me, I would call the police immediately.
I also find Ryan’s behavior at certain moments inadequate, strange, and unlikely. But maybe it’s not all that unlikely. Who knows!
Overall:
Promising Young Woman is a fascinating well made film, and perhaps if I find the opportunity, I’ll write more about it later in a more spoiler-laden, analytical piece. Carey Mulligan deserves to win an Oscar for her work here, and I hope writer/director Emerald Fennell gets the recognition she deserves, too.