Promising Young Woman by Jonny Numb

Promising Young Woman is a revenge film that cuts differently than I Spit on Your Grave or Ms. 45, but stands alongside those efforts as one of the best of its kind. It differentiates itself from conventional thriller fare by advancing toward organic-feeling inevitabilities, not mechanical twists and turns.

Despite the IMDb’s categorization of Promising Young Woman as a “crime/drama/thriller,” its actual place falls into a gray area of social commentary and character analysis. It’s a film about wounds that refuse to heal and the actions they inspire. As a result, events seem predestined by the choices the characters have made.

In other words: it’s not about how the wheel of fate will turn in the final act, because the wheel turned long ago. Miraculously, writer-director Emerald Fennell finds a way to make these inevitabilities unpredictable throughout.

Every Possible Argument

Like-minded films such as Natalia Leite’s M.F.A. make their positions as unambiguous as possible at the expense of authenticity and character. That film began in a place of painful reality that was undone by its avenging-angel superhero approach in the latter half.

And it’s not that stories about sexual violence need to make every possible argument. Films like M.F.A., I Spit on Your Grave, and Ms. 45 clarify, with brutal conviction, that a man nullifies his voice once he   commits a non-consensual act. Promising Young Woman goes one further, implicating the passive or apathetic females who side with male transgressors – even if their siding is through inaction.

This recalls a sequence late in I Spit on Your Grave, when Jennifer (Camille Keaton) corners rapist Johnny (Eron Tabor). As she makes him strip at gunpoint, he poorly rationalizes his actions while deferring blame to his cohorts (“any man would’ve done what we did…a man is just a man,” etc.). The scene culminates with Jennifer, seemingly swayed by her rapist’s logic, looking off in a daze as she lowers the gun. What Johnny fails to realize is that Jennifer has just taken control of the situation, reclaiming her agency as a fiercely independent woman. He’s so delusional, he doesn’t realize this until he’s castrated and bleeding to death in a bathtub.

Primal Screams

Underestimating the female victim is a crucial aspect of the aforementioned films. Promising Young Woman finds interesting visual ways to make protagonist Cassandra (Carey Mulligan) seem small, usually by presenting her from low angles (the restaurant scene with former classmate Madison (Alison Brie), or minimized by across-the-room long shots. But her voice conveys an acrimony and contempt that’s been hardened over time. Her humor is jaded in a manner that extends beyond cliché millennial disaffection; there’s a void festering deep within her soul.

I Spit on Your Grave and Ms. 45 align the viewer with their female protagonists through the horror of what they endure at the hands of men. Grave, however, provides only minimal inklings of Jennifer’s personality and social class (she’s a writer from New York City). Ms. 45 introduces Thana (Zoe Lund), a mute garment worker who is raped twice in a single day. In many ways, zero-tolerance vengeance becomes their primal scream towards the world’s injustices (quite literally, in Thana’s case).

Perhaps as a response to the aforementioned films, Fennell gives Cassandra a voice. Indeed, the most significant weapon in her arsenal is persuasion. She knows what means the most to her targets, and manipulates them accordingly. She banks on the knowledge that they’ll view her as “less than” or “hysterical,” depending on the scenario. Her memory is long and unforgiving, to the point where a friend’s mother (Molly Shannon) simply encourages her to “move on – everybody else has.”

What happens when suffering is internalized to the point where it’s a normal part of everyday existence? In the case of Promising Young Woman, Cassandra’s angst is rooted in the trauma of another. Living with the emotional fallout for 7 years has put her in stasis – at 30, she’s a barista who lives with her oblivious parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge).

Narrative Wrinkles

None of Fennell’s characters are painted with a broad brush, which leads to unexpected narrative wrinkles. Accusations of complicity are met with varying degrees of denial and acceptance. Even seemingly benevolent characters never escape the possibility of an unarticulated dark side. Perhaps it was Cassandra’s worldview taking hold of me, because even when Promising Young Woman depicts scenes of comfort and calm, I never felt truly at ease.

Paul Verhoeven’s Elle also changed up the rape-revenge formula. Isabelle Huppert was dominant, mysterious, and manipulative as the violated titular character. She, too, rose up from trauma. However, at middle age, Elle also found ways to compartmentalize her trauma and move on with her life (she’s a successful videogame designer whose father was a serial killer). She’s difficult and disagreeable, but also strategic…even when her actions put her in further danger.

Cassandra is also not minted for sainthood. The extent to which she manipulates characters who’ve transgressed ranges from the innocuous to the extreme. Promising Young Woman is not the type of rousing male-gaze fantasy that justifies preliminary exploitation elements with a third-act bloodbath where the woman reigns triumphant over the men who defiled her. Indeed, the film’s most extreme moments are kept off-camera, thus amplifying their effect in the mind’s eye.

A Road Less Traveled

An even closer corollary to Promising Young Woman is 1994’s Death and the Maiden. Based on a stage play by Ariel Dorfman, the film places prominent South American lawyer Gerardo Escobar (Stuart Wilson) and his wife, Paulina (Sigourney Weaver) in a scenario where an unexpected guest (Ben Kingsley) just might be the man who raped and tortured Paulina under a prior regime.

Despite powerful performances from Wilson and Kingsley, the film belongs to Weaver’s physically bruised and psychologically broken character. She wields her words with the same brutality as a pistol, unflinching as she relays her degradation to Gerardo, who is stuck in the thankless position of a spouse unable to modify past events.

While the mystery at the film’s core threatens to culminate in violence, director Roman Polanski (whose own real-life transgressions add a murkiness to the fictional proceedings) opts for a road less traveled in this subgenre. The end result is thoughtful, troubling, and unconventional all at once.

Fallible Humanity

Not unlike Death and the Maiden, there is an element of fallible humanity permeating Promising Young Woman. Cassandra has been luring men with her “drunk” act for an indeterminate amount of time (perhaps years, if the hashmarks in her journal are any indication), and honed the weaknesses of her true targets for even longer.

When she confronts a male lawyer (Alfred Molina) or a college dean (Connie Britton), the way she has all angles of their arguments covered speaks not to Hollywood screenwriting contrivance, but years of anguish transmuted into methodical calculation. As the rest of the world forgets her best friend, Cassandra carries a torch that only grows brighter and more furious with time.

The final act of Promising Young Woman is tough and appropriate. One of life’s most common axioms is “actions have consequences,” and the best films bring this cold reality home with unapologetic harshness. Not unlike the ending of Death and the Maiden, Fennell questions the actions of her characters, leaving the viewer to parse out the residual murkiness.

4.5 out of 5 stars