"It's every man's worst nightmare, getting accused of something like that."
It’s been about 24 hours since I finished watching Promising Young Woman and the lingering feeling of dread is still with me.
Emerald Fennell comes onto the directing scene with her feature directorial debut, that opens by making the audience wonder: That drunk woman really doesn't know what she is doing and she really needs to go home... Or does she?
During a time when rape culture is somehow a thing, the story is very topical. Especially when looking at American college campuses. Nearly 100 colleges and universities have a significant number of reports of rape on their main campuses. Studies generally find that somewhere between 19% and 27% of women and 6% to 8% of men are sexually assaulted during their time in college. To watch a film discuss this topic without depicting a woman going through these ordeals or possibly trials afterwards, and instead picking up the pieces, stands out as something very different.
The film shows us the aftermath of a woman whose best friend in college gets sexually assaulted and falls on deaf ears afterwards. Carey Mulligan plays Cassandra Thomas who in her right is a Promising Young Woman, that leaves medical school to take care of Nina Fisher - a friend that has been a victim of rape and isn't believed by her peers or the Institution that is meant to protect all their students. We first see Cassandra in a dingy club where she is clearly too drunk to function, a seemingly 'nice guy' asks if he can call her a cab, as she has lost her phone. Like most 'nice guys' he decides to get a cab with her and convinces her to come up to his apartment. We can all see what comes next: He decides to take advantage of Cassandra even though she has repeatedly asked "what is happening", "what are you doing", to which this knight in shining armour responds by continuing to remove her underwear.
Like a switch Carey Mulligan perfectly flips from drunk and incoherent moans to a direct and calm, almost threatening question: "I said what are you doing?". Holding Carey in the middle of the frame with the audience looking slightly up shows us who has the power in this scene and in the whole movie, stealing every single scene she is in effortlessly. She never plays the distressed heroine; even when acting drunk, she maintains a very in controlled atmosphere around her.
However, throughout the film there is always this feeling that she may go too far. Cassandra pretends to be the girl that's had too much, but as soon as the man proves himself to be the sexual predator that she suspects he is, she cuts the act and surprises them and slices them in half with her strong demeanour. Her vigilante acts make your heart grow heavily with worry - what happens if the next man turns out to be worse than the others?
Promising Young Woman is an encapsulating experience, the blend of comedy and thriller eases you into a much darker story than you might have first imagined. With the slow instrumental version of Britney Spears' Toxic rounding up the finale of the film, the already lingering feeling of dread sets deep into your bones leaving you to wonder and obsess over every little 'what if' within the film.
"Can you guess what every woman's worst nightmare is?"
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