Before I heard anything about the actual movie itself, I heard criticism of Carey Mulligan’s casting. Mulligan plays 30 year old Cassie – a complex character who spends her free time feigning intoxication and luring unsuspecting predators into showing their true colours. The reviews I read questioned whether Mulligan could pull off the part of a woman capable of luring men home and I honestly have to wonder if the people who wrote such things understood the irony of their words by the end of the movie.
Whilst not billed as a horror per se, the movie definitely sits closely to the genre – if not predominately for showcasing the horror of reality.
Promising Young Woman is darkly funny, with plenty of moments that will have women smiling and sighing along knowingly. Beneath the humour is an uncomfortably real account of the horrors faced by women in society today – and if you have ever found yourself wanting to pipe up ‘but not all men’, I urge you to watch this movie.
Clever and astute, some of the humour within ‘Promising Young Woman’ leaves a bitter aftertaste, as you smile wryly as Cassie follows a ridiculous YouTube make up tutorial whilst realising such videos are actually pretty commonplace. As far as women have come, Mulligan’s protagonist shows how even now in 2021 – a woman shunning the cultural norms of seeking marriage and domesticity is seen as somehow deficient.
What Promising Young Woman does is show that this ingrained rape culture goes beyond beyond just certain areas of society – with Cassie’s targets encompassing female peers and successful, educated women who unknowingly hold different standards of behaviour between women en masse and their own family.
There is so much I want to say about this movie, but I don’t want to give too much away as it’s definitely a film everyone needs to watch.
Stylistically, it is beautiful. The dialogue is clever and astute and there is a lingering sense of dread that metaphorically sits closely with the reality of being a woman.
At one point near the movie’s conclusion – a man experiences the threat of accusation and highlights how it is every man’s worst nightmare. Mulligan retorts with the devastating mic drop – ‘and what do you think every woman’s worst nightmare is?’.
With a fantastic ensemble cast (Laverne Cox, Jennifer Coolidge, Alison Brie and Molly Shannon to name a few) and a soundtrack that will have you wanting to relive your 90s girl power phase (the haunting version of Britney’s ‘Toxic’ will stay with me, and the haunting relevance of the #freeBritney movement is not lost), Promising Young Woman is both beautiful and powerful. Yes, it’s only February, but I already feel confident this will be in my top movies of the year.
The title of the movie itself comes from recent media coverage of a high profile rape case from the US where the offender was described as a ‘Promising Young Man’, with criticism being held against the sentencing for what was described horrifically by the man’s family as ‘a steep price for 20 minutes of action’.
Where the media and rape culture in society today bemoan the impact of such allegations, Promising Young Woman instead asks the question that no one seems to be asking.
What about the women?
