Movie Review: 'Promising Young Woman' is Bold, Stylish and Challenging

No movie has occupied my mind in the way Promising Young Woman has. I watched the movie in late November with the intention of writing this review two weeks before the December 25th theatrical release date. That didn’t happen, obviously. So I decided to watch it again. Something about the movie nags at my mind. I think the movie is remarkable. Promising Young Woman is stylish, confident, well acted and memorable.

But what is the movie trying to say?

Promising Young Woman stars Carey Mulligan as Cassie. Cassie has a very unique obsession. At least once a week, Cassie goes to bars, pretends to be falling down drunk, and waits for a ‘nice guy’ to offer her a ride home. Once the nice guy reveals his real intention is to take advantage of her, Cassie reveals her ruse and humiliates the fool in deserving fashion. Then she returns home to her parents house where she lives to add another tally to her lengthy notebook of conquests.

We will learn why she does this… sort of. Cassie’s best friend, Nina, took her own life after she was raped at a party in med school while she was drunk and unconscious. Cassie’s obsession with humiliating potential rapists is both her way of coping and an apparent addiction she’s developed with humiliating men. I’m assigning that last part myself, the movie never openly indicates that Cassie is addicted to anything, but I felt I needed a mental justification here.

Cassie’s obsession is interrupted when she meets Dr Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham). Ryan comes into the coffee shop where Cassie works and the two have an awkward reintroduction. Cassie and Ryan had gone to med school together before Cassie dropped out to take care of Nina. Ryan unintentionally insults Cassie’s job, wondering how one of the highest ranked people in their med school class ended up serving coffee. An awkward and apologetic Ryan invites Cassie to spit in his coffee as punishment and so she does. And he drinks it anyway.

Somehow, despite this encounter, Ryan returns the following day and convinces Cassie to go on a date with him. She agrees but when he’s walking her home, he invites her to his apartment. Cassie turns immediately from being charmed by Ryan to thinking he’s just like every other guy. Eventually. Cassie does give Ryan another chance and for a time it appears there is a future there.

Appears is the keyword there however as Promising Young Woman is not a strange romantic comedy about a screwed up manic pixie dream girl learning how not all men are bad. Writer-director Emerald Fennell has something far more unique in mind. I can’t tell you much more than that as Promising Young Woman is a movie filled with unexpected twists that you will not see coming, for better or worse.

Promising Young Woman is an incredibly divisive movie. I know because it has divided my mind for weeks. A lot of mainstream moviegoers will struggle with Promising Young Woman as the premise is daunting and the ending, which I hated on my first watch, and appreciated on rewatching it, is an absolute shocker that is incredibly divisive. What happens with the protagonist in Promising Young Woman, I promise will leave you breathless. You will either be angry or you will appreciate how bold the movie is,

I was initially angry after my first viewing of Promising Young Woman. Watching it again, I felt less angry and more appreciative of how unexpected and bold such an ending truly is. Emerald Fennell is not afraid of pushing us as an audience to uncomfortable places and paying off with memorable moments or even a big, slightly awkward laugh. Promising Young Woman is unapologetically bold.

But what does it all mean? What was Promising Young Woman intending to say? It’s not that all men are rapists or some other such nonsense. Rather, I think the message is about complicity. It’s about the willingness of many in our society to go along to get along. We watch something terrible happen to someone, whether in person or via the media, and because it isn’t happening to us or someone we care about, we go on about our day.

Promising Young Woman puts that mindset on trial via characters played by Connie Britton, Allison Brie and Alfred Molina. In a series of set pieces, Cassie will visit each of these characters, who had different roles to play in what happened to Nina, and she enacts an exercise upon them that forces them to see what happened to Nina in a more direct fashion. Each represents different parts of our system, each of which let down Nina and, in a larger, metaphorical sense, let down the real Nina’s of the world everyday.

Promising Young Woman opened in theaters on December 25th, 2020.