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)
Plots(1)
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)
Promising Young Woman is a revenge-flick product of the #metoo mindset in a pop package with a pleasing cast and more thorough characterisation of the protagonist than we are used to from thematically similar revenge-horror movies. Carey Mulligan is cute, but the mentions of “Oscar-worthy” acting are off base. Besides that, the film in no way goes beyond the creative boundaries of playful fluff, which is original only in its placement of the given theme in the A-list mainstreem. Conversely, the would-be screenwriting magic in the climax serves as confirmation of the film’s creative limits within the confines of a mere fresh teen drama. Plying the same waters, Assassination Nation was bolder and more stylish.
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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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If you've known the term "rape culture" for more than a year, you're not looking at the film through the spectacles of this fundamental issue, and thus you can see in all its nakedness how horribly written and filmed the whole thing is. Nowhere in the world do people talk to each other like this, the dialogue sounds like internet discussions read out loud or situations condensed from different articles. It's filmed like a sitcom, it's static (and often with insignificant poser symbolism), and in the faster sequences it's so badly edited that you can't tell exactly what happened. The film even has a reasonable musical structure, yet has no tempo, which I never would even have thought was technically achievable. And I've only seen a romance handled this poorly maybe in the film Obvious Child. Unfortunately, Promising Young Woman is exactly that case where a theme pushed from below gets into the hands of the middle class. It becomes a dull and silly hurrah farce that enjoys its untouchability and success under the wing of its subject. The whole issue of rape culture is thus relegated to a dumbed-down platitude, the trademark strong woman, and by continuing to be represented by similarly bad and calculated films it will retrospectively do a disservice to the whole fight against patriarchal society. Hashtag cinema at its worst.
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It’s quite contrived, especially the ending, but the curiosity is pinned at a pretty decent level and the story even manages to pleasantly surprise with the fate of the main characters. Carey Mulligan is good (though I couldn’t shake the feeling that she looks old compared to her peers) and, if we consider how close the premise was to uncontrolled feminist bollocks, everything holds convincingly together and without slipping into the realm of cheap parody. A good #metoo snack that won’t gratuitously piss-off the boys. :) 75%
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Razor-sharp one moment, borderline cringe the next, yet sufficiently provocative and compelling at the same time. The story is obviously mining the current social discourse, but I don't necessarily consider that anything bad. The reason is that it's terribly important whether the filmmakers are capable of working with the story in such a way as to make a good film. In this case, fortunately, they were. It is, of course, feminist all the way, and intellectually bare macho individuals will be disgusted by the overly one-sided female perspective that doesn't differentiate men into good and bad and only classifies their level of character reprehensibility. The personal scorecard in the form of an old-school written diary is one of the biggest cringe moments; on the other hand, it perfectly illustrates the stubbornness and the main character's own hangups. I'm far from suggesting that the cynical recording of all the results could have the slightest cathartic effect on the central character's psyche, yet I can't identify her motivation here in any greater detail. And I actually enjoy thinking about it that way, because Cassie is certainly not portrayed as a black and white character here. Thus, Promising Young Woman definitely has something to offer in the end, as she manages to use all the craziness surrounding the #metoo movement to build seemingly absurd yet compelling themes. [75%]
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