(Spoilers!)
Who is the promising young woman of the film’s title? Is it Cassie? Is it Nina? Is it the dean’s daughter? Is it Madison? Is it Gail? Is it all of us who started out innocent and were forced to become survivors? The phrase comes from the notorious Brock Turner rape case, where the judge blithely let him off with three months’ probation because Turner was a “promising young man.” But what of the promising young women, asks the film, via writer/director Emerald Fennell, who also wrote episodes of “Killing Eve“?
Cassie (Carey Mulligan) is a med-school dropout who avenges the rape of her best friend, who later died (possibly by suicide). The film stars Mulligan, Laverne Cox as her boss Gail, Allison Brie as former friend Madison; Bo Burnham as love interest Ryan, Chris Lowell as rapist Al Monroe, and a host of others, including Mollie Shannon as a bereaved mother, who add depth and texture to the story. Cassie seems to be living a dead-end life, living with her parents at age 30, working lackadaisically in a coffee shop, wasting her time. But by night, she dresses like a party girl, smears her makeup, and frequents bars where guys pick her up and take her home, presuming she’s drunk.
“I’m a nice guy!”
“Are you?” she asks.
“What are you doing?” she asks in her slurred voice as a dude tries to take off her panties. Then, “What are you doing?” she asks again, steely, dead sober. Watching her turn the tables is brutally delicious as Cassie, a Poison Ivy-like shero with torn stockings, stares down construction workers and beats down passing motorists who dare to taunt. (I’ll admit to cheering these scenes.)
Her targets blubber the standard “promising young man” responses: “I’m a gentleman.” “Don’t think I’m a bad person.” “We were kids!” “I’m a nice guy!”
“Are you?” she asks. There’s no need for an answer. We already know.
The tone feels much like a rom-com as the narrative pings off a rekindled friendship and traditional markers of romance, like the meet cute, the awkward date, meeting the parents. So when the story turns, on the discovery of a video of her friend’s rape, you can literally see Cassie get triggered, see her mind breaking, watch her burn down her world. Cassie, describing her dead best friend in a passionate, poignant soliloquy at the film’s climax, will break your heart.
Spoiler-Opinion
Watching the film as a survivor, I was prepared to be triggered, though it wasn’t severe, for me (your mileage may vary). I laughed where I saw Cassie take revenge, and I sat in wait for the terrible reckoning to come in the film’s climax. I enjoyed the film as a whole but was left with a question for survivors to mull. The film seems to suggest that there’s no hope, that survivors (victims, really) are permanently broken. That they can’t go on. That a suicide or death is their only way to achieving peace. And that enrages me.
While it is true that surviving a sexual assault (or, indeed, any kind of violence, from a random mugging to domestic violence) will change a person, and it may take a person time to recover, it feels overly broad to declare a person ruined and unredeemable after said assault. Once you’ve survived something like sexual violence (even if it was not violent per se–but it went against your consent), you are changed. You are not the same as before, in ways that can make you seem more serious or mature than you were before. But that does not mean you are cut off from the possibility of happiness, of love and relationships, of having a family, or laughing and having fun, ever again.
As a super-shero tale, “Promising Young Woman” is very good.
Where the movie fails survivors is in showing Cassie attempting to engage in a relationship (with Ryan, one of the complicit bystanders to the rape), and failing there, giving in, planning and expecting her own death. She goads Al to kill her, intentionally nailing him to the cross with her demise. It’s pretty dark. It works in this fiction (a satisfying ending, ish). But that’s not how it ends for most survivors. Frankly, such machinations are beyond me, even on my best days; assuming survivors have this death wish does not account for the strength of those who have indeed survived, and have continued to live lives with goodness and contentment in them. I’m sad for the character of Cassie, and even though I cheered her stone-cold lessons to her would-be-maulers, I know I’m not made that way, and the real world doesn’t work that way, either.
Perhaps Cassie was spiritually dead anyway, and she found peace on the other side. Perhaps she’s an avenging angel: Note the cinematography, in how many times she is framed by putative wings and halo, or the soundtrack, with “Just Call Me Angel” (Juice Newton). As a super-shero tale, “Promising Young Woman” is very good. As a look at survivors, it’s a little bleak.
The movie, which originally premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including best picture.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted
Call the hotline
1-800-656-HOPE (4673)
or visit rainn.org
Photos courtesy of Focus Films
