Promis­ing Young Women – first look review

Despite efforts to move towards a cul­ture which blames per­pe­tra­tors of rape rather than vic­tims, we still have a long way to go. It’s no sur­prise that this hor­rif­ic form of sex­u­al assault has cropped up time and time again in films; one only has to look to Wikipedia for a long list of inclu­sions in the ​‘rape-revenge’ genre, from ghast­ly tor­ture porn to sub­ver­sive works by emerg­ing female directors.

As more women are able to tack­le this top­ic on their own terms, rather than rely­ing on ​‘rep­re­sen­ta­tion’ through sto­ries writ­ten and told by men, we are increas­ing­ly able to change the nar­ra­tive. Emer­ald Fennell’s Promis­ing Young Woman feels like an impor­tant addi­tion in this new canon, an incen­di­ary dram­e­dy that con­fronts the trap­pings of the genre as well as soci­etal com­pla­cen­cy towards women who speak up against sex­u­al predators.

Haunt­ed by events which occurred dur­ing her time at med­ical school, 30-year-old Cassie (Carey Mul­li­gan) engages in self-destruc­tive behav­iour while just about hold­ing down a job at a cof­fee shop, much to the cha­grin of her par­ents, who she still lives with in a sprawl­ing sub­ur­ban home. An encounter with an old class­mate (Bo Burn­ham) com­pels her to exor­cise some per­son­al demons and forces her peers to con­front the inci­dent which end­ed Cassie’s dreams of becom­ing a doc­tor. Jux­ta­posed with pas­tel-hued inte­ri­ors and spark­ly pop bangers is the mem­o­ry of some­thing ugly and mon­strous, but no one around Cassie has any inter­est in con­fronting it, much less try­ing to make amends (not that one ever real­ly can).

There can nev­er be a defin­i­tive film on rape and trau­ma; instead each one offers us new ways of see­ing and under­stand­ing years of col­lec­tion oppres­sion and abuse. Fennell’s film is one sto­ry, fea­tur­ing a pro­tag­o­nist who is right­eous­ly angry and often unlik­able, and a host of soft-fea­tured ​‘nice guys’ plucked from pop cul­ture (Adam Brody, Chris Low­ell and Christo­pher Mintz-Plasse all fea­ture), but it’s sym­bol­ic of some­thing so many women have faced – not just the trau­ma of rape, but the after­math and fre­quent dis­missal of vic­tims as liars or fantasists.

Remark­ably, Fen­nell mar­ries heavy sub­ject mat­ter with impres­sive light­ness. Promis­ing Young Woman is a black com­e­dy at heart, with one awk­ward fam­i­ly din­ner scene par­tic­u­lar­ly mem­o­rable. Of course, the humour makes the dark impli­ca­tions of the film’s third act all the more shocking.

From her work on Killing Eve to her short film Care­ful How You Go, Fen­nell has always demon­strat­ed a fas­ci­na­tion with the grey spaces of moral­i­ty, and her debut fea­ture is no excep­tion – it’s a metic­u­lous, can­dy-coloured fairy tale with a blis­ter­ing cen­tral per­for­mance from Carey Mul­li­gan that’s quite unlike any­thing she’s done before. Provoca­tive and recal­ci­trant, it’s sure to spark plen­ty of debate, but also res­onate with any­one who has seen their life (or, indeed, the life of some­one they love) changed for­ev­er by rape.

Watch­ing this film at Sun­dance, where Har­vey Wein­stein used to act as de fac­to may­or, feels par­tic­u­lar­ly poignant; films have such pow­er to help us con­front not only pain, but the ugli­ness of the soci­ety we live in and those failed by insti­tu­tions sup­posed to pro­tect them. It’s not just the insti­tu­tions though; it’s indi­vid­u­als too, who believe per­pe­tra­tors over vic­tims and tell women to not make a fuss. There’s still so far for us to go in cor­rect­ing this, but if you don’t leave the cin­e­ma after watch­ing Promis­ing Young Woman with a sense of unshak­able anger on behalf of all the women and girls failed by the jus­tice sys­tem, you haven’t been pay­ing close enough attention.