Comedy is like chocolate. If it’s soft and sweet it’s no use, but if it’s dark and bitter and brittle it can be a thing of beauty. Promising Young Woman is a film so dark it won’t allow light to escape and as a consequence is immensely satisfying. The best thing is that it achievs its considerable triumph by stealth.
This is a grand bait and switch manoeuvre perpetrated by writer-director Emerald Fennell and producer-star Carey Mulligan. It looks like a romcom. There are so many pinks and blues and pastel hues it feels like you have accidentally tuned in to Legally Blonde. But although it may have the look of a romcom it has the soul of a Saw movie.
Cassie (Mulligan) looks like a rootless Gen Z slacker living working a McJob in a coffee shop and living with her folks (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge). They’re a lovely couple, and supportive too but when they give her a suitcase – shocking pink naturally – for her 30th birthday the message is clear.
The audience however knows that Cassie is a woman on a mission. We have already seen her, blind drunk, in a nightclub being picked up by a predatory man. They go back to his place; he discovers that Cassie is faking – a bait and switch of her own – and another name is added to her list.
Cassie’s plan is to confront men with their poor moral choices and scare them straight. Her friend Nina was a victim of these men and now Cassie wants revenge.
It looks as if things might change with the arrival on the scene of a former classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham). Her parents are thrilled to meet this nice young man, Perhaps Cassie can be saved by the love of a good man? What do you think?
Cassie is not so easily swayed. As she becomes more wrapped up in her quest it is obvious that she is prepared to sacrifice literally anything and anyone to achieve her ends. It is this determination that takes us to an ending that appears to divide audiences but which, for me, is perfect in its audacity and execution.
Promising Young Woman is a provocative piece. It is a film given pointed significance by the likes of Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, and the MeToo and TimesUp hashtags.
It is also a film that highlights our tendency to protect the guilty and punish the victim. One of Cassie’s darkest and cruellest schemes is reserved for a powerful woman who did nothing to intervene with Nina. It’s a reminder of Madeleine Albright’s quote about a special place in hell for woman who don’t support other women.
Promising Young Woman is incredibly well-written by Emerald Fennell who also makes anassured directorial debut. The lead performance from Carey Mulligan is remarkably brave and the results are genuinely memorable with a movie that is as much a talking point as a film.
