2021 Oscars Review: Promising Young Woman
Carey Mulligan as Cassie. Mulligan is nominated for Best Actress at the 93rd Academy Awards.
Hi! This is Erin and I am here to write a review for the buzzy Promising Young Woman. This is a movie outside of the typical Academy Awards’ normal fare, and is nominated for five Oscars, including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Actress for the wonderful Carey Mulligan. This movie is available to rent. Spoilers ahead, friends!
“It’s every man’s worst nightmare, getting accused of something like that.” - Al Monroe
“Can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is?” - Cassie Thomas
Have you ever watched a movie with one initial reaction, only to have your opinion shift as time went by? I went into Promising Young Woman pumped, excited to see an actor I love (the always lovely Carey Mulligan) in a glorious feminist movie written and directed by a first time female director, Emerald Fennell. While watching, I sat enraptured as the candy-coated scenes unfolded, bopping along to pop songs of sleepovers past and chuckling at the darkly comic lines and purposeful exaggeration. Then that ending hit. I tried to explain it away. “Well, I see where she was going with that. I like, GET it.” But a week later, as I write this, I’m not so sure that this is a film that I’ll be revisiting OR recommending to my girl friends.
Promising Young Woman is considered a “rape revenge film” (isn’t it so sick that this is considered a genre?) despite Fennell’s choice to omit the word “rape” from the entire screenplay. Millennial Cassie (Carey Mulligan) is a woman on a mission to avenge the rape of her best friend Nina. Night after night, Cassie frequents dark bars and clubs, sitting alone, pretending to be intoxicated and incapacitated. When a man attempts to “help” her (something that happens every single time) and decides to take advantage of her, Cassie teaches them a lesson.
What is initially interesting about this film is that Cassie doesn’t actually harm these men. A brief scare and apology, along with a “maybe next time you’ll think before you act,” is the extent of the repercussions for each guy. While at first, the viewer might be searching for more of a consequence, I found that this instead was an accurate portrayal of how women have to behave. We can’t be too confrontational. Cassie is already in a really dangerous position. Violence just never ends well for women. Is it unfair? Absolutely, but it’s a fact of life - one that almost every woman I know will recognize and understand.
This brings me to what I think is the biggest strength of this film: the incredible casting. First of all, Carey Mulligan is ALWAYS the right choice. She is a revelation in this film—devastatingly funny, relatable, and able to switch her persona on a dime. The casting of the men in this film, however, is almost like a winking joke unto itself. One of the important aspects of this movie is that it is a spotlight shining on men who consider themselves “nice guys.” They think of themselves as non-threatening towards women—allies, if you will. However, sometimes these men are the ones that don’t understand the word “no.” They are the ones who manipulate a situation, the ones that feel entitled to things that are not their own.
It could have been easy to fall into the trap of casting the typical “frat bro” in this role, but that’s not what Promising Young Woman chose. Instead, it is like Fennell was able to search through my middle and high school DVD collection while choosing these men. Whether you watched The O.C., Veronica Mars, or New Girl, the actors that you rooted for in those teen dramas and comedies were on your screen in a more sinister role. As someone who had the AIM screen name “MrsAdamBrody” in high school (cue internal cringe forever), it was so genius to have him onscreen trying so hard to make that one-sided kiss work. Not even my college self was safe. Yes, I watched Bo Burnham stand up YouTube videos in my dorm room, so it was like “Oh yay! I love him!” and then soon enough became, “Ugh. Not HIM too.” I just can’t say enough about that choice, and I think it really brought home the idea that “nice guys” aren’t always as nice as they would like to think.
Before discussing my dismay with the ending of the film, I would be remiss to not mention the moment when I sat up straighter, yelled, “OH MY GOD NO WAY” and smiled like a crazy person at the TV. “Stars are Blind” by the one and only Paris Hilton is THE featured song of the movie. If there is something I would bet money on, it would be that only women around my age would be able to immediately identify that song if it came on in a bar. It’s a total classic that did not get the recognition it deserved. Yes, I love “Stars are Blind” unapologetically. It is finally time that it gets its moment in the sun. It plays during an awesome scene too. Cassie finally lets her guard down with her former med school classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham), and this is the song that plays as they fall in love. It’s just downright iconic. At this point, I was totally smitten with the film. Unfortunately, what happens just a few minutes later is what makes my opinion of the film so much more complicated.
The climax of the film sees Cassie heading into the bachelor party of the man who had sexually assaulted her friend Nina. This man became an engaged doctor while Nina dropped out of school and died by suicide. While in the past, Cassie was willing to part with her would-be perpetrators with a stern warning and food-for-thought, this was the moment where we just might get the violent retribution that we had previously anticipated. It turns out that we do, just not in the way we thought. While Cassie is attempting to carve Nina’s name into her rapist’s chest, she is overpowered by him and killed.
It is a major shock and it happens quickly. It’s certainly an unforgettable scene. And my first thought was, “Well it’s totally accurate.” The fact is that this happens to women all the time. Getting revenge in this way just isn’t a reality. If this is real life, Cassie would not have much of a chance at a happy ending. She was entering into a cabin with twenty grown men with her mind set on violence. If she wasn’t hurt or killed, she would certainly be arrested after her crime. In fact, Emerald Fennell echoes this idea, saying in an interview with Harpar’s Bazaar, “It was important to me that if the audience is expecting, or wanting violence, then this is what happens when women try to be violent. It’s why we don’t ever try to be violent. Because it goes wrong. No matter how clever she is, no matter how meticulously planned it is, it’s very, very difficult to physically fight a man if you’re a small young woman, or any woman really. So part of it for me was just the reality of the situation.” While this is true, and this was my initial reaction, God...is that really the message we want to put out there?
Before Cassie is killed, she knows that she is in danger of this happening, so she sets things in motion to make sure that the men responsible for murder are brought to justice. The closing scene has the red and blue flashing lights of the police and the supposed satisfaction of Cassie and Nina beyond the grave. But unlike the incredible Get Out, the police sirens at the end of the film are not accompanied by an important social message. So I guess women just need to wait for the police to arrest the bad guys? And sometimes they are going to have to wait until they die? It is one thing to not sugar coat the reality of the situation (especially when dichotomized with the bright colors and sweetness of the look of the film) and quite another to miss the reality of the millions of women who are survivors of sexual assault and harassment.
Days after watching this film, I can’t help but feel even more exhausted, angry, and disheartened than before. I watched this only a few days after the death of Sarah Everard, a woman who was killed by an off-duty police officer while walking home from a friend’s house. I saw a lot of criticism of the movie’s final act online, and while I initially felt like dismissing it, I couldn’t get it out of my brain. Now I can’t help but agree that it is a complete misfire. With a different ending, I think that you could have a really interesting film, one that takes a point of view on the Me Too movement and the realities of being a woman every single day. Unfortunately, as it is now, it leaves a bitter taste.
Rating: 7.5/10