A Promising Young Woman
Director: Emerald Fennell
Writer: Emerald Fennell
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Max Greenfield, Chris Lowell, Alfred Molina
Reason for watching: first time viewing/award season movie
Number of times I’ve watched it: once
***
Every movie is about something. That’s an incredibly vague statement, but each and every movie is amount more than just the surface level. Usually, the protagonist in a movie goes on a journey or learns a lesson that ties into that “something.” For example, Wonder Woman isn’t just about a powerful heroine from the Amazonian island; it’s about finding hope or beauty in a terrible world where people do awful things because people are awful. A great movie uses the setting and the action or story beats to further deepen this “something” that the movie is about. The Godfather follows a man’s journey into the family business of becoming a crime boss, which furthers the meaning of how easy it is to fall into darkness. You can dig down into a movie and usually find out what it’s all about when you find that something. Sometimes you can find many “somethings” that all converge or relate to each other to make a movie even better.
So what is A Promising Young Woman really about? It’s about the destructive way that certain men behave towards women, and what the consequences of those actions are. The story follows Cassie (Carey Mulligan), a med school dropout, who goes out every weekend to a couple, acts sloppy drunk which gets a man to take her home, and then she threatens them by throwing their actions in their face after they try things with her. She goes on a mission to get revenge on everyone from her med school who played a part in the sexual assault of her best friend, Nina. Eventually, she winds up getting the vengeance/justice she seeks.
To say Carey Mulligan’s performance is breathtaking would be an understatement. The whole of this movie hinges on her performance. Teetering back and forth between the right level and genius thinking and paralyzing sadness, she delivers. A different kind of actor might take this role too seriously or ham it up too much, but she portrays Cassie as having almost a detachedness from her actions and thoughts. In a few moments she thinks she has found love or happiness, and we do get to see a brighter side of her then. But that person isn’t meant to be who we follow for the whole of this movie. Like I said early, this isn’t a redemption story.
I want to spoil the end of this movie so if you’re planning to see it, just skip to the bottom and see the rating. So go ahead.
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Everyone else still here? Cool.
Ultimately, Cassie goes to a weekend bachelor party of the man who assaulted her best friend to get that ultimate revenge. Dressed as a stripper, she secretly roofies the groomsmen and other party-goers and gets the soon-to-be groom (Chris Lowell) alone for some presumed bachelor party ridiculousness. After she handcuffs him for a private dance, she reveals who she is and starts to slowly unwind how she knows what he did and tries to get him to confess to the crime he committed. This is a confession that she does not need as a previous victim of hers already gave her a video evidence of the assualt. Refusing to confess and fighting back, the man breaks free of one of his handcuffs and smoothers Cassie to death. The next morning the best man (Max Greenfield) finds Cassie dead and secretly goes with the groom to burn her body out in the wilderness. Eventually, Cassie still gets revenge and gets the groom arrested as she told a former attorney, another man she paid a visit to on this path of revenge. It is revealed she told this former attorney what she planned to do that weekend leading the police to arrest the groom.
I spoiled that last act of the movie to get to what I believe the “something” is about in this movie. From a certain perspective as we watch this movie one can view Cassie’s actions as immoral or extreme. And at time they do seem cruel. While I could point out the evil and mean things we see the men do during the first two acts of the movie are just as bad (and there are several scenes I didn’t mention from those acts), I would argue that the actions taken by the groom when confronted of his past actions make this movie’s point more than any harassment scene could. He literally freaks out so much that he has to MURDER Cassie. He doesn’t just lie, he kills someone because he lacks the moral strength to face the truth about what he did. That’s what this movie is about. That some people, particularly men in this case, can be so diluded that they would rather go as far as they can to avoid facing the heinous reality of their actions. Going so far as to kill.
It’s a terrific movie with an honest message. This movie isn’t all darkness though. It’s honestly pretty funny in certain parts, it keeps the movie from being too gloomy. Excellent job by director Emerald Fennell. Please make more movies, Ms. Fennell.
9/10
Until I see another one