Directed by:
Emerald FennellScreenplay:
Emerald FennellCinematography:
Benjamin KracunComposer:
Anthony B. WillisCast:
Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Laverne Cox, Clancy Brown, Jennifer Coolidge, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Molly Shannon, Angela Zhou, Sam Richardson, Steve Monroe (more)VOD (4)
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From visionary director Emerald Fennell comes a delicious new take on revenge. Everyone said Cassie (Carey Mulligan) was a promising young woman...until a mysterious event abruptly derailed her future. But nothing in Cassie’s life is what it appears to be: she’s wickedly smart, tantalizingly cunning, and she’s living a secret double life by night. Now, an unexpected encounter is about to give Cassie a chance to right the wrongs of the past in this thrilling and wildly entertaining story. (Universal Pictures UK)
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Reviews (11)
A rough patch on a rough bag. If it weren't for the (complete) ending, I would probably be a little happier, but even so, Promising Young Woman surprised me a lot with how thoughtfully, stylishly and often mischievously amusingly Emerald Fennell managed to grasp a topic with which she could just as well have had struggles. Carey Mulligan is perfect (one wouldn't even know she's the same actress as in The Dig) and I was pleased with Alison Brie in her small role.
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I watched Promising Young Woman without watching the trailer or doing any further research about the film, and I was definitely surprised by the final product. The plot, involving a a crime for which the statute of limitations has expired, is nothing we haven't seen elsewhere before, and you figure out pretty soon what actually happened back then. But the film's engaging element is the ambiguous character of Cassie and her (slightly) sociopathic cat-and-mouse game, which has a justifiable reason. While there is a perceptible wink to the #metoo campaign, I found it non-violent and unobtrusive in its execution. So for just under two hours, to the soundtrack of (at times playfully adapted) familiar hits, I was swept along on a journey of revenge, the conclusion of which annoyed me to some extent but ultimately satisfied me. P.S. In the end I was reminded of The Life of David Gale.
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It's a refreshing mix of an unadventurous romantic relationship film and a drama with a social subtext. The film opens up and tackles today's hot topics such as the ills of social networks, sexual violence and, last but not least, the eternal well of ideas in the form of pigeonholing and clientelism. At times it feels a bit like Basic Instinct without the explicit violence, Jerry Goldsmith and the ice pick, but it is endearingly nerdy or, coldly formulaic and sophisticated. Mulligan in her best role in years and thank goodness the ending isn't messed up and needlessly overdone. The only thing that really jumps out at you are the occasional moments where the characters can do 100 different things, but they do the one that fits the story so that the plot can continue.
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It would be tempting to say that it's an uncritical critical success primarily because of the subject matter and the gender behind the script and direction, but that would be unfair to the author. The qualities in this case are due to the way the current #MeToo issue is conceived "with balls" and free of obscene declamations. I don't share the objections to the author's black-and-white "men are pigs" vision when it's the women (Madison, the dean, the ambivalent anti-heroine Cassie herself) who contribute to the overall effect/impact of "rape culture" here, after all, that's what the two acts of the revenge plan are all about. What's more, even if it did, it rides such a surgically precise black-humor wave about an achingly serious subject with a clever, deliberately overblown 80s pop neon styling that it's impossible not to fall for. Carey, then, is as engrossing as she is disturbing with her complex "PTSD performance" in the whirlwind of a self-destructive spiral of vendetta, and so perhaps only the line with Ryan grates a little too much, because it's too obvious from the start why she's there and where she's going with it. The weakest link is of course the hotly debated ending. Not the ending itself – that one is perfect –, but rather the epilogue. On the face of it, it's delivered in a way that brings satisfaction, but the further away from the screening, the more obvious it becomes that it's redundant and takes the whole thing a bit too far. It could and should have ended already in a surgery or a non-literal postal package.
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One of the few #metoo films with a heroine who’s an interesting and complex character, whose actions can be viewed quite critically, but are still somehow understandable. Add to that Carey Mulligan’s impressive performance and you get something really fun to watch, even if some situations stink of screenwriting meddling. Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack and one of the most satisfactory endings in a long time.
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