Movie Review : Promising Young Woman (2020)
* Follow me on: Facebook - Twitter - Instagram *
Revenge movies are fun for a particular reason : everyone believes they’ve been wronged by somebody, at some point in their lives. They often explore particular situations, which allow the audience to use on-screen revenge fantasies to fuel their own. What revenge movies have never been quite good at exploring is systemic issues, like… let’s say rape culture. They’re not nearly subtle enough. Well, they WEREN’T subtle enough until Promising Young Woman came along.
Promising Young Woman tells the story of Cassandra Thomas (the immortal Carey Mulligan), who put her life on hold since the suicide of her childhood friend Nina, who was raped in med school. She works in a coffee shop, lives with her parents and entertains herself by exposing perverts in her neighbourhood bar, who rape young women too drunk to give their consent. She confronts them to their deviance to put fear in their heart. That’s how she controls her trauma.
It’s going smoothly for her until an old friend from med school (Bo Burnham) comes back into her life and the opportunity for a new life presents itself.
The politics of marginalization
Rape revenge movies aren’t exactly new, but the idea has never been treated quite like Promising Young Woman does it. The closest parallel I could draw is I Spit On Your Grave meets Hard Candy, but even that would sell writer and director Emerald Fennell’s ambitions short. It is bound to create quite a lot of controversy and be dismissed as feminist thrash because of one uncomfortable concept that kind of broke my brain : Promising Young Woman marginalizes men.
The first thing that jumped at my face while watching Promising Young Woman is that none of the male characters ring true, except perhaps for Bo Burnham’s. It took me about 5 minutes and one conversation with Josie to understand this was on purpose. We’re not the target audience for this movie and it’s extremely disorienting because usually everything is meant for straight white men like me. I’m not supposed to relate to anyone.
Men in Promising Young Woman are the reflection of women’s fears, past experiences and trauma. They are a composite experience of all the bullshit we put them through. Of course, you could take offense. But how many female characters in movies are simply reflections of our sexual fantasies with a thin veneer of theoretical feminism applied on their leather pants? A lot. So, I… kind of liked the idea of experiencing what being marginalized feels like.
It feels fucking uncomfortable.
A rape revenge film with no sex
Promising Young Woman was a powerful experience, because it really addresses the nuances of rape culture. There is no sex whatsoever in this movie. There is the threat of sex, the idea of nonconsensual sex, the idea of consensual sex, but you never see anyone go at it. All the sex in Promising Young Woman happened either in the past or in an uncomfortable hypothetical future. Cassandra refuses to let it control her life, but uses it to control other people.
Emerald Fennell’s brilliant scenario explores how sex can be weaponized in situations where the decision is taken unilaterally. That decision is usually taken by men, but Cassandra is taking it in Promising Young Woman. She takes plenty of unilateral decisions that people who were complicit in Nina’s rape simply have to live through. Her point is simple, but extremely clear : sex can control you and ruin your life and other people simply won’t give a shit.
I’m not going to spoil how Cassandra singlehandedly takes revenge on everyone involved in the coverup because it’s just too fucking delicious. I liked that she wasn’t directly the victim, though. It shows how powerful sex is. That it still has a powerful enough stigma to paralyze lives through shame, fear and sometimes even banalisation. We tend to collectively think of rape as savage back alley assault from strangers, but most times it isn’t that.
*
I’m usually dubious of movies that are unashamedly about social justice issues, but Promising Young Woman isn’t EXACTLY that. It does not aim to make you feel a certain way, but to merely to expose a heavy epistemological problem women have to deal with. It’s a reflection and not a projection. That makes it probably the best, most impactful #metoo movie I’ve seen yet. It’s emotionally and intellectually violent, but it’s by design.
It’s not a movie meant to be forgotten.
8.7/10
