It’s Oscar season once again and tucked away amongst the various dramas nominated is a black comedy thriller called A Promising Young Woman. This film was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival early last year and received positive reviews, followed by five academy award nominations. Honestly, after watching, I can understand the hype.
2020 Focus Features
A Promising Young Woman is more than just a thriller, it is a taut dissection of gender dynamics and rape culture. It follows Carey Mulligan’s character, Cassie Thomas, as she seeks to avenge her best friend who was a victim of rape that went unpunished. Mulligan provides a layered performance, switching between calculating, detached and vulnerable. Unlike a lot of films that follow female characters that have been victimised, Cassie’s revenge is a lot subtler than most. No bloodshed, no graphic murder in an attempt to provide the audience with some catharsis. Instead the film uses the psychology of situations to its advantage, turning characters’ beliefs in on themselves and forcing them to confront the truth themselves. A particularly harrowing example has her trick Alison Brie’s character who didn’t believe the victim into thinking she had been taken advantage of while drunk. When the character is next seen, the damage this has done is visible and distressing.
2020 Focus Features
The other thing that sets this film apart from the typical revenge fantasy films, is that nothing is presented in a straight forward black and white manner. There’s no cartoonish evil and Cassie’s actions aren’t shown as heroic or even particularly positive. Even before she begins her pursuit of revenge, when she is merely targeting random men at the bar who attempt to take advantage of her perceived drunkenness, it’s shown to be deeply damaging. It’s made clear that her life is stagnating due to the mentality she has developed towards men.
The dialogue is purposefully and never misses the opportunity to use one of the common victim blaming lines, but it doesn’t come across as cliché or overly scripted. There are some smaller but very powerful moments featured that demonstrate some of the harassment women receive on the street and how quickly this attention turns into outright hostility when a woman stands up for herself in even the smallest way.
It also does a disturbingly good job at describing the impact an assault has on a person, the way that it can utterly obliterate who you are and leave only that singular event burned into your mind.
2020 Focus Features
The plot was strong for the majority of the film, however the final act felt weaker in comparison and for a time I did think it was going to end on a completely hopeless note. It managed to regain its footing at the very end though. After finally beginning to move on, Cassie is drawn back into her revenge after being given a video of her friend’s assault. From then on things get a bit more dramatic and undoes some of the previous events. Cassie becomes more aggressive in her revenge and it’s revealed that her boyfriend, a character who had previously been shown in only a positive manner, was aware of the video. The final moments of the film paint a world where even ‘good’ people won’t do the right thing… but also that it only takes a single person to speak up to make some difference.
A Promising Young Woman is an excellent film that sinks its claws into the viewer and will strike a chord with the female audience. I wish it luck at the Oscars.
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