PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
****
Director: Emerald Fennell
Screenplay: Emerald Fennell
Principal cast:
Carey Mulligan
Bo Burnham
Jennifer Coolidge
Clancy Brown
Alison Brie
Alfred Molina
Country: UK/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 113 mins.
Australian release date: 7 January 2021.
This totally surprising revenge thriller, Promising Young Woman, blazes across the screen like a fiery comet. It’s a remarkable debut feature from the showrunner of series two of Killing Eve, Emerald Fennell, who also wrote the screenplay (furthermore, she plays Prince Charles’ mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, in the current series of The Crown, and she’s an accomplished author. Phew!). There’s an Australian connection, too, through actress Margot Robbie, who’s one of the producers via her LuckyChap Entertainment company although she doesn’t appear on screen in the film. It’s a highly original script, fooling you into thinking “I know where this is going” but shattering that illusion with its shocking denouement, and it features a blistering performance from Carey Mulligan as the central character. She’s Oscar-worthy.
Cassie (Mulligan) is around 30, a university med-school dropout who had a promising future until she gave it all up and returned to live in her parents’ (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge) haute kitsch home. By day she works at a coffee shop run by her friend Gail (Laverne Cox) but at night she turns into an avenging angel, tricking men into thinking she’s sexually vulnerable but then humiliating them. Her modus operandi is to pretend she so drunk that she’s about to pass out until a ‘good Samaritan’ offers to assist her home. Of course, once they’re sure she’s at their mercy, their good intentions change into something less honourable and more predatory, whereupon she snaps out of her faux intoxication and delivers them a mortifying lesson in sexual behaviour. She’s very good at her chosen hobby, too, changing her dress, hair and make-up according to the type of bar she’s decided to hunt in that night, from trashy to upmarket. Why she does this emerges slowly because she’s a solitary figure, a mystery even to her bewildered parents but when the reason for her nocturnal activities becomes clear it’s hard to condemn her. Apart from the random ‘Johns’ she picks up or, rather, allows herself to be picked up by, she also seeks retribution from a number of other people (and they aren’t all men) from her university days, laying carefully thought-out traps for each of them - until the day she runs into Ryan (Bo Burnham), a friend from college who’s now a successful paediatrician, and they start to date. For a while, Cassie calms down, enjoying the experience of having a regular boyfriend, but when she gets some new information about the event that so traumatised her at uni, her avenging angel persona returns… with an increased desire for vengeance.
In the #MeToo atmosphere of today, a film like Promising Young Woman was bound to emerge. It’s depressing to think that men behave in the way that we see on screen here but we know that it’s all too true from the cases we read about online and in newspapers every single day. A couple of recent high-profile trials involving young women and rugby players spring to mind. The movie’s tone fluctuates between the tropes of a classic revenge thriller and an empathetic romcom once Ryan enters the picture whereas, in fact, it’s neither of those things. Fennell’s great strength is in keeping her audience guessing, and her story never quite goes where you think it will. Another surprise is that it’s also pretty funny at times, albeit blackly so.
Mulligan is at her very best in PYW. Fennell wanted her for the role of Cassie from very early on, convincing the producers that Mulligan could play against type, and Mulligan was certainly up for it despite declaring that, “On first reading it, I was scared of [the screenplay].” But, she says, “Meeting Emerald, I started to understand the nuance to it. She kept saying she wasn’t interested in making a gritty indie film. She wanted to make a film that people liked, that was beautiful and visually exciting and thrilling.” And with that, she signed on. A further key component of Promising Young Woman is the off-kilter score by Anthony Willis, much of which is augmented by eerie reworkings of well-known pop songs. Especially apt is Archimia’s version of Britney Spears’ Toxic. It’s itchy and scratchy and completely suitable for the subject.
The final word should go to Fennell, a director to watch. She says, “What was important to me about this movie is that there’s nothing in it that isn’t extremely commonplace. I wasn’t interested in making a film that examined terrible crimes and terrible acts of violence and the people that commit those things. I’m much more interested in our culture and thinking, how are we all part of this awful knot that we need to unpick?” Regrettably, she’s right, and there are no real winners in this tale but it’s fun to watch.
Screenplay: Emerald Fennell
Principal cast:
Carey Mulligan
Bo Burnham
Jennifer Coolidge
Clancy Brown
Alison Brie
Alfred Molina
Country: UK/USA
Classification: MA15+
Runtime: 113 mins.
Australian release date: 7 January 2021.
This totally surprising revenge thriller, Promising Young Woman, blazes across the screen like a fiery comet. It’s a remarkable debut feature from the showrunner of series two of Killing Eve, Emerald Fennell, who also wrote the screenplay (furthermore, she plays Prince Charles’ mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles, in the current series of The Crown, and she’s an accomplished author. Phew!). There’s an Australian connection, too, through actress Margot Robbie, who’s one of the producers via her LuckyChap Entertainment company although she doesn’t appear on screen in the film. It’s a highly original script, fooling you into thinking “I know where this is going” but shattering that illusion with its shocking denouement, and it features a blistering performance from Carey Mulligan as the central character. She’s Oscar-worthy.
Cassie (Mulligan) is around 30, a university med-school dropout who had a promising future until she gave it all up and returned to live in her parents’ (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge) haute kitsch home. By day she works at a coffee shop run by her friend Gail (Laverne Cox) but at night she turns into an avenging angel, tricking men into thinking she’s sexually vulnerable but then humiliating them. Her modus operandi is to pretend she so drunk that she’s about to pass out until a ‘good Samaritan’ offers to assist her home. Of course, once they’re sure she’s at their mercy, their good intentions change into something less honourable and more predatory, whereupon she snaps out of her faux intoxication and delivers them a mortifying lesson in sexual behaviour. She’s very good at her chosen hobby, too, changing her dress, hair and make-up according to the type of bar she’s decided to hunt in that night, from trashy to upmarket. Why she does this emerges slowly because she’s a solitary figure, a mystery even to her bewildered parents but when the reason for her nocturnal activities becomes clear it’s hard to condemn her. Apart from the random ‘Johns’ she picks up or, rather, allows herself to be picked up by, she also seeks retribution from a number of other people (and they aren’t all men) from her university days, laying carefully thought-out traps for each of them - until the day she runs into Ryan (Bo Burnham), a friend from college who’s now a successful paediatrician, and they start to date. For a while, Cassie calms down, enjoying the experience of having a regular boyfriend, but when she gets some new information about the event that so traumatised her at uni, her avenging angel persona returns… with an increased desire for vengeance.
In the #MeToo atmosphere of today, a film like Promising Young Woman was bound to emerge. It’s depressing to think that men behave in the way that we see on screen here but we know that it’s all too true from the cases we read about online and in newspapers every single day. A couple of recent high-profile trials involving young women and rugby players spring to mind. The movie’s tone fluctuates between the tropes of a classic revenge thriller and an empathetic romcom once Ryan enters the picture whereas, in fact, it’s neither of those things. Fennell’s great strength is in keeping her audience guessing, and her story never quite goes where you think it will. Another surprise is that it’s also pretty funny at times, albeit blackly so.
Mulligan is at her very best in PYW. Fennell wanted her for the role of Cassie from very early on, convincing the producers that Mulligan could play against type, and Mulligan was certainly up for it despite declaring that, “On first reading it, I was scared of [the screenplay].” But, she says, “Meeting Emerald, I started to understand the nuance to it. She kept saying she wasn’t interested in making a gritty indie film. She wanted to make a film that people liked, that was beautiful and visually exciting and thrilling.” And with that, she signed on. A further key component of Promising Young Woman is the off-kilter score by Anthony Willis, much of which is augmented by eerie reworkings of well-known pop songs. Especially apt is Archimia’s version of Britney Spears’ Toxic. It’s itchy and scratchy and completely suitable for the subject.
The final word should go to Fennell, a director to watch. She says, “What was important to me about this movie is that there’s nothing in it that isn’t extremely commonplace. I wasn’t interested in making a film that examined terrible crimes and terrible acts of violence and the people that commit those things. I’m much more interested in our culture and thinking, how are we all part of this awful knot that we need to unpick?” Regrettably, she’s right, and there are no real winners in this tale but it’s fun to watch.