Promising Young Woman: a woman searching for catharsis that she’ll simply never find

With joyful music “Boys” playing. A few fat middle-aged men are awkwardly twisting their butts in a bar in slow motion. This is the opening image of Emerald Fennell’s ambitious debut “Promising Young Woman”.

It has been theorized that the title is to satirize the infamous Brock Turner case, where the Stanford student was given only a six-month sentence for sexual assault. He was released three months early for 'good behavior'. Much was made at the time of Turner's promising future as a swimmer. The judge considered him to be a 'promising young man'. 

Which brings the central tenet of Promising Young Woman  - why are we willing to sacrifice promising young women for promising young men?

The film, starring Carey Mulligan, is about a woman named Cassie Thomas, whose friend Nina was raped and committed suicide.  Cassie seeks revenge on the men who raped her friend. 

Cassie has an interesting hobby. At night, in various bars and clubs, she simply appears to be intoxicated.  She lures men at night into revealing that their perception of their moral code is a form of denial. “This is just a film about people who think they’re good being told by someone that they’re not good. And I think that’s what’s so unnerving about it.” Said Fennell.

Promising young woman falls into the catalog of Revenge Movie Feminism. And then It’s different from all of them.

Suppose you’ve heard of Revenge Movie Feminism. You should’ve heard of “Ms. 45”.  It had the rep as the "Citizen Kane" of rape and revenge movies. In 1981,  working with screenwriter Nicholas St. John, Abel Ferrara tapped into the subgenre of 'urban violence/revenge/vigilante' movies ("Death Wish," "The Driller Killer"), and gave the genre a twist by focusing on a woman who goes on a killing spree after she is raped. The film developed a cult following.  

In “Ms.45”. After being raped and robbed,  Thana( the lead ) goes from victim to vigilante. At first, Her note saying "I just want everyone to leave me alone". So she would just kill all the men who try to harass her. Soon after the killings, she realizes she gains pleasure out of killing. She goes way beyond just men who harass and potentially attack her to going after any man who offends with his actions toward women.

In the climax scene, Thana, dressed up like a nun, goes to a party, where she begins her final cathartic moment of basically killing any man she sees.

Ms.45 has a big impact on Promising young woman. And then there’s a lot of difference. In promising young woman , Cassandra never crosses the line.  All she does is make people face who they are, and confess their mistakes. Noting violent until the last bachelor party scene when Cassandra tries to carve Nina's name on the chest of the rapist and ends up getting killed. And that’s tragic.

Fennel also did a splendid job directing the audience’s attention. Things shift from bad to good, hopeful to dreadful at quick speeds, adding to the chaos already within the story. After Cassandra entraps the nice guy to take her home and then reveals herself not intoxicated at all, it’s on hold what exactly Cassandra has done to the guy. But in the following scene we see Cassandra walking on the street, with joyful music, and red on her feet, which makes us think that she must have done something terrible to the man, the camera dollies up, then we see the red is tomato juice from a sandwich Cassandra’s eating. The red bloody juice drops off. As if Cassandra abused or even killed the man, until later in another scene, we learn that Cassandra never did anything more than teach the guys a lesson.

The revenge on Madison, after Cassandra gets Madison drunk, She hires a good-looking guy to take Madison into a hotel room. When Madison wakes up, she thinks something terrible has happened to her. Later, Madison learns that nothing happened. But the on-hold information not only leads the audience but also makes Madison suffer and contemplate what happened with Nina.

To some people, it's not until you go through tragedies by yourself that you can empathize with people. Yet empathy is the only thing that connects the whole world into one universe.  

One of the other differences between the promising young woman and other revenge movies is the tone of the film. Unlike most rape-revenge films. Fennel chose to use bright colors for most of the scenes. Also the music, not dim, but bright music. Makes the movie look like a romantic comedy other than a revenge thriller.

The main story of Promising young woman is about Cassandra’s revenge on the whole system of male privilege and moral authority， the roots of the tragedy of her friend Nina.  But deep inside, Cassandra knows her obsessiveness for revenge is a burden to all the people that love her. She reunites with an old classmate named Ryan (Bo Burnham), and soon the two start dating. They have solid chemistry. Ryan seems like a nice guy, he doesn’t rush the courtship, making it feel genuine and believable that Cassie would let her guard down for the first time in a long time. Ryan gives her hope that maybe there are good guys.  

Cassandra finally decides to move on. The tone of the film switches to a romantic comedy. Everything is going in the right direction which the audience roots for. Then Cassandra gets this video from Madison and learns that Ryan participated in Nina’s rape event as a bystander who kept laughing. When confronting Ryan, Ryan refuses to confess what happened using the excuse “I was just a kid”. After Cassandra refuses to forgive Ryan, Ryan tries to humiliate Cassandra. Like all the other guys in the movie, Ryan is pretending to be a nice guy, but a self-ego hypocrite.

“I’m a nice guy”  “I’m a gentleman,” said the guys at the bar and by the rapist. “You might be surprised to hear that gentlemen are sometimes the worst,” says Cassandra when she’s pretending to be a stripper. Are you a nice guy? Cassandra keeps on staring at those guys until it creeps them out. Feels like they all wait for her judgment and forgiveness. Fennel tries to make Cassandra the holy virgin. Just like in Ms. 45, makes Thana a nun in the final shooting scene.

In the bachelor party scene! It totally subverted the revenge feminism subgenre! It’s a lot of suffering to watch Cassandra being suffocated by Al who raped Cassandra’s best friend years ago! With a long shot, the camera slowly pushing forward, Cassandra is being choked under a pillow with Al on top of her! You realize how hard it is for a woman revenge a man! It’s realistic rather than cathartic!

Promising young woman does bring a catharsis moment in the end. After her death, Cassandra somehow sends some future texts which alert the police about what happened. The police come to Al’s perfect wedding and take all the “nice guys” into custody! Cassandra doesn’t send the crime video to the public which saves the perfect boyfriend’s ass. But not for his sake,  for her dead girlfriend Nina! What a crew thing to do if she let everyone see Nina humiliated by a group of men just to revenge them.

Promising young woman is a film about a woman searching for catharsis that she’ll simply never find.  It's not a cathartic but realistic film. Promising young woman is one of the best movies I have watched in a long time. It's a film feels so fresh and exciting, and sad.