Promis­ing Young Woman

In an inter­view with The New York Times that ran in Feb­ru­ary 2020, Har­vey Weinstein’s attor­ney, Don­na Rotun­no, was asked by reporter Megan Twohey if she had ever been a vic­tim of sex­u­al assault. ​“I have not,” Rotun­no replied. ​“Because I would nev­er put myself in that position.”

It’s not a sur­prise that the woman defend­ing Wein­stein would have such a mis­guid­ed view of how preda­tors oper­ate, but it is a damn­ing indict­ment of the world we live in all the same. For all the self-aggran­dis­ing award speech­es and glit­tery plac­ards with catchy slo­gans yearn­ing for sex­u­al enlight­en­ment, many peo­ple still believe that, some­times, women deserve to be assault­ed. To be clear: that is unequiv­o­cal, unde­ni­able bull­shit. No mat­ter what a woman is wear­ing, how drunk she is, or any oth­er mit­i­gat­ing fac­tor report­ed by jour­nal­ists or argued by lawyers or gos­siped about at brunch by so-called ​“friends”, she nev­er deserves to be raped.

Emer­ald Fen­nell​’s debut fea­ture, Promis­ing Young Women, comes at a time when this intro­spec­tion feels more vital than ever, forc­ing us to con­front our ten­den­cy toward com­pla­cen­cy in the face of unpleas­ant home truths. It seems ridicu­lous that we keep hav­ing to go over this basic prin­ci­ple, but the sys­tem is fucked from the top down, and we’re all caught in its web, hope­less­ly kick­ing out in attempts to find a way through. For as long as we have been mak­ing art we have been using it as a means to both process trau­ma and hit back at the flaws of the soci­ety that has birthed and raised us.

The film’s title refers to Cas­san­dra ​‘Cassie’ Thomas (Carey Mul­li­gan), a 30-year-old barista lan­guish­ing in her par­ents’ sub­ur­ban show home, haunt­ed by an ​“inci­dent” involv­ing her best friend Nina that took place sev­en years pri­or and caused her to drop out of med­ical school. Ever since Cassie has been unable to find peace, caught on the injus­tice of the sys­tem. Her self-destruc­tive behav­iour is intend­ed to scare some sense into the local con­tin­gent of preda­to­ry men, but leaves her feel­ing empty.

A chance meet­ing with for­mer class­mate Ryan (Bo Burn­ham) expos­es Cassie to a hard truth: she’s the only per­son who cares (or indeed remem­bers) what hap­pened back in col­lege. Fuelled by dis­be­lief and anger, she decides to take more rad­i­cal action.

This may sound famil­iar, giv­en the long cin­e­mat­ic his­to­ry of the ​‘rape- revenge’ genre, in which a woman (or some­one close to her) claims vengeance against an attack­er. Two notable points of com­par­i­son are 1978’s I Spit on Your Grave, in which a young woman exacts bru­tal revenge on the men who have raped her, and 2005’s Hard Can­dy, where Ellen Page lures a pae­dophile to his demise; both deemed con­tro­ver­sial on release due to sub­ject mat­ter and extreme graph­ic content.

Many films belong­ing to this genre con­form to the use of vio­lence as cathar­sis: women wield knives and guns; women wreak bloody hav­oc; women make evil men hurt as much as they have been hurt them­selves. But it rarely ever goes that way in real­i­ty. Promis­ing Young Woman bucks the trend in its spar­ing use of vio­lence. It is not sat­is­fy­ing to mere­ly play out a fan­ta­sy, because that’s what vio­lent vengeance is, real­ly. It’s the jus­tice vic­tims rarely get in real life.

Fen­nell instead opts to con­trast the bit­ter real­i­ty of sex­u­al assault and its after­math with a hyper-stylised aes­thet­ic. Cos­tume design­er Nan­cy Stein­er – best known for her work on Sofia Coppola’s The Vir­gin Sui­cides – dress­es Cassie in whim­si­cal flo­rals and flow­ing dress­es. Her hair is neat­ly plait­ed, her nails are man­i­cured and paint­ed in cutesy rain­bow pas­tels. This stands in sharp con­trast from the blood-soaked hero­ines that came before her.

When Cassie goes out at night, her dishev­elled make-up and short hem­lines invite leer­ing men to crit­i­cise her before they attempt to take off her clothes. ​“They put them­selves in dan­ger, girls like that,” one man remarks, watch­ing Cassie main­tain her drunk­en façade at a bar. How many times have we heard that line before? It’s Fennell’s laser focus on the insid­i­ous­ness of the sub­ject mat­ter which is her mas­ter­stroke. She presents a world where sex­u­al assault is shrugged off as a fol­ly, with men and women alike so uncom­fort­able with the con­ver­sa­tion, they can’t even bring them­selves to utter the word rape.

Mul­li­gan, who time and time again proves her ver­sa­til­i­ty with chal­leng­ing roles, is mas­ter­ful­ly cast. Her vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty gives way to rage with­out any hint of melo­dra­ma. Cassie is an often deeply dis­agree­able char­ac­ter, tem­pered by Mulligan’s irre­press­ible charm, but per­haps the biggest rev­e­la­tion is how fun­ny she can be, too, effort­less­ly trad­ing barbs with Burn­ham, whose back­ground in com­e­dy makes him the per­fect awk­ward roman­tic foil. A fam­i­ly din­ner sequence is a ten­sion-reliev­ing delight, and there’s unde­ni­able chem­istry between the lovestruck pair.

In cast­ing fel­low soft-fea­tured, flop­py-haired stars such as Adam Brody, Chris Low­ell and Christo­pher Mintz-Plasse, Fen­nell toys with notions of what a preda­tor looks like – so often they’re the men who pur­port them­selves to be ​“nice guys”. And sure, men can be oth­er­wise decent, while still shrug­ging off their behav­iour as ​“boys being boys” and women ​“over­re­act­ing”.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the ubiq­ui­tous good girl Ali­son Brie deliv­ers a fine turn as Cassie’s for­mer class­mate Madi­son, a wine-chug­ging new mom­my, while Jen­nifer Coolidge (once known sole­ly as ​‘Stifler’s Mom’ from the Amer­i­can Pie fran­chise) is on per­fect com­ic form as Cassie’s lov­ing but con­cerned mother.

These details mean that Promis­ing Young Woman at once exists as a part of pop cul­ture while also being in dia­logue with it. Drop­ping Paris Hilton’s pop clas­sic ​‘Stars Are Blind’ and the use of slow-creep­ing orches­tral ver­sion of Brit­ney Spears’ ​‘Tox­ic’ are fun touch­es, but they also prompt the view­er to con­sid­er the way these women – who became famous young, and suf­fered at the hands of the patri­archy – have had to fight to reclaim their own narratives.

Cassie recounts – with cool exte­ri­or yet seething with rage – the man­ner in which Nina dis­ap­peared after she was raped. Every­thing became about her attack­er and how he was affect­ed. ​“It’s every guy’s worst night­mare get­ting accused like that,” he says. Cassie smiles. ​“Can you guess what every woman’s worst night­mare is?”

Fennell’s film con­fronts us with our own com­pla­cen­cy. There’s a con­trolled sense of right­ful anger at the cul­ture which has always encour­aged men to take what they want, but beyond rag­ing against abhor­rent behav­iour which seems ram­pant with­in cer­tain groups of men, Fen­nell points out how women, too, are part of the machin­ery of rape cul­ture, and how pas­siv­i­ty can be harm­ful in its own right. These home truths aren’t easy to stom­ach, but they are nec­es­sary. We can all do better.

This goes beyond men in dark alleys or car­ry­ing mace when you walk alone at night. Sex­u­al assault is endem­ic with­in our cul­ture. If a woman has not expe­ri­enced some form of sex­u­al assault them­selves, they know some­one who has. Fennell’s film is enter­tain­ing and pep­py, but there’s an unshak­able sad­ness that derives from unflinch­ing hon­esty. Beneath the lip­stick and the eye­lin­er, it’s a sear­ing con­dem­na­tion of how we think about sex­u­al assault, the jus­tice sys­tem and the sup­port avail­able for sur­vivors. May the anger it gen­er­ates in audi­ences spark some long-over­due change.