LWLies 84: The Promis­ing Young Woman Issue – On Sale Now!

Being angry is exhaust­ing. It saps your time, your ener­gy, your resources – it eats away at you until all that’s left is a vibrat­ing husk of bare­ly-con­cealed rage. I’ve been so angry for so long at so many injus­tices that blight our soci­ety, it’s often dif­fi­cult for me to real­ly get a han­dle on that all-con­sum­ing wrath, and more impor­tant­ly, chan­nel it into some­thing more pro­duc­tive than impo­tent­ly rag­ing at the gen­er­al machine. It’s some 30 years since John Lyn­don shout­ed ​“Anger is an ener­gy!” in Pub­lic Image Ltd’s ​‘Rise’, but the sen­ti­ment remains. As cathar­tic as a pri­mal scream can be, I’m all for find­ing ways to har­ness my dis­gust at the cur­rent world order for good.

Even before I joined team LWLies, I real­ly believed in its strapline: ​‘Truth & Movies’. That’s what we strive for here, and I strong­ly feel our lat­est issue, cel­e­brat­ing Emer­ald Fennell’s incen­di­ary fea­ture debut Promis­ing Young Woman, reflects this edi­to­r­i­al aim. It’s not often we get to show­case a debut fea­ture (the last one was Mike Cahill’s Anoth­er Earth) but we’re excit­ed to be cham­pi­oning Fennell’s fierce­ly orig­i­nal film, which feels par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ti­nent giv­en the fraught cul­tur­al moment we’re liv­ing in.

In Promis­ing Young Woman, Carey Mul­li­gan is a woman dri­ven to take dras­tic action relat­ing to an ​“inci­dent” that occurred some years pre­vi­ous dur­ing her time at med­ical school. It’s hard to ignore the rel­e­vance of Fennell’s film to the ongo­ing move­ments around #MeToo and Time’s Up, but con­ver­sa­tions around female trau­ma at the hands of a male-dom­i­nat­ed soci­ety didn’t start with these move­ments and won’t end with them either. Fennell’s pitch-black com­e­dy is hard to stom­ach at times, but a pierc­ing, vital addi­tion to the grow­ing canon of films that allow women to speak for them­selves rather than through the gaze of men.

On the cover

We reached out to Belfast-based illus­tra­tor Lau­ra Callaghan to pro­vide our cov­er and end­pa­pers, and she def­i­nite­ly deliv­ered. Her hand-paint­ed por­trait of Carey Mul­li­gan as femme fatale Cassie Thomas cer­tain­ly packs a punch. We pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Carey on the cov­er back in 2009 for An Edu­ca­tion. She joins the illus­tri­ous ranks of Robert Pat­tin­son and Joaquin Phoenix in our Two Cov­ers Club.

In this issue…

Tox­ic Avenger
Emer­ald Fen­nell reflects on the expe­ri­ence of cre­at­ing her debut fea­ture and offers an impas­sioned defence of Paris Hilton’s singing career.

Fight Starter
One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing actors work­ing today, Carey Mul­li­gan sits down to dis­cuss smash­ing the patri­archy and why it pays to be picky when it comes to her work.

The Lost Careers of Dif­fi­cult Women
Emma Fras­er inves­ti­gates the women whose careers were dam­aged at the hands of Har­vey Wein­stein, and how they’ve tried to rebuild them since.

A Female Rage Man­i­festo
Co-founder of The Final Girls Anna Bogut­skaya offers up a com­pelling out­line for women on the verge, both on and off-screen.

Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror
42 years since its orig­i­nal release, Ele­na Laz­ic screens Meir Zarchi’s I Spit On Your Grave for an assem­bled audi­ence, and apprais­es their response.

The Noble Stalk­er
Who­ev­er said nice guys fin­ish last? Leila Latif explores the rich – and dis­turb­ing – cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry of benign stalking.

Beware the Fluffy Pen
Abbey Ben­der presents a com­pelling the­o­ry regard­ing the ills of befeath­ered writ­ing implements.

What is Thirst?
Ahead of her anthol­o­gy She Found It at the Movies and the BFI: THIRST sea­son, author and pro­gram­mer Christi­na New­land pro­vides a primer on female desire.

Wait­ing for Lunch
Lit­tle White Lies’ own Sophie Monks Kauf­man and Han­nah Wood­head exchange text mes­sages regard­ing per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al frustrations.

Like Gang­busters
To coin­cide with the release of her won­der­ful por­trait of youth in revolt, Rocks, film­mak­er Sarah Gavron speaks to Han­nah Clugston about the rep­re­sen­ta­tion of girl gangs on screen.

Nee­dle Point
Philip­pa Snow speaks to film­mak­ers Joe Lawlor and Chris­tine Mol­loy about Rose Plays Julie, their haunt­ing take on the rape-revenge genre.

Threads
In her reg­u­lar col­umn on fash­ion and film, Christi­na New­land inves­ti­gates the film his­to­ry of Polyvinyl chlo­ride – bet­ter known as PVC.

Illus­tra­tions by Lau­réne Boglio, Alice Carnegie and Simon Hayes.

In the back section…

Pedro Cos­ta, leg­end of Por­tuguese cin­e­ma, speaks to David Jenk­ins about his lat­est mas­ter­piece, Vitali­na Varela.

Kle­ber Men­donça Fil­ho explains the dif­fi­cul­ty of nav­i­gat­ing Brazil­ian pol­i­tics as a film­mak­er to David Jenkins.

Haifaa Al Man­sour offers insights into her brand of fem­i­nism and the dif­fi­cul­ties of being one of Sau­di Arabia’s few female film­mak­ers to Fati­ma Sheriff.

Alice Winocour chats to Ele­na Laz­ic about Prox­i­ma, her space film which doesn’t actu­al­ly take place in out­er space.

All illus­tra­tions by Mari­na Esmeraldo

In review…

Pedro Costa’s Vitali­na Varela, Rose Glass’s Saint Maud, Lev­an Akin’s And Then We Danced, Kle­ber Men­donça Fil­ho and Juliano Dor­nelles’ Baca­rau, Julian Jarrold’s Sul­phur and White, Oliv­er Laxe’s Fire Will Come, Andrew Kötting’s The Whale­bone Box, Lor­can Finnegan’s Vivar­i­um, J‑P Valkeapää’s Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, Hlynur Palmason’s A White, White Day, Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s The Truth, Haifaa Al Mansour’s The Per­fect Can­di­date, Michael Caton-Jones’ Our Ladies, Alice Winocour’s Prox­i­ma, Johannes Nyholm’s Koko-Di, Koko-Da, Ben Rivers and Anocha Suwichakornpong’s Kra­bi, 2526, Scott Graham’s Run, Hen­ry Blake’s Coun­ty Lines, Vaclav Marhoul’s The Paint­ed Bird, Pablo Larraín’s Ema, Emi­ly Har­ris’ Carmil­la, Wern­er Herzog’s Fam­i­ly Romance, LLC, Aki Omoshaybi’s Real, Ladj Ly’s Les Mis­érables and Kit­ty Green’s The Assistant.

LWLies 84 goes on sale 10 March. Pre-order and sub­scribe here.