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| images courtesy Focus Features |
British
actress Emerald Fennell was already a well-established character actress
heavily involved in television in film, notably in the role of Camilla Shand in
Seasons 3 and 4 of Netflix’s The Crown,
long before setting her sights on the director’s chair with her electrifying
debut feature Promising Young Woman. Uniting with Drive and Shame actress
Carey Mulligan in one of her most formidable roles yet, Fennell writes and
directs this original spin on the revenge feminist tale which at once tackles a
heavy subject of predatory male sexual behavior while serving up a new kind of
ferocious heroine determined to burn down the silver screen. Let it be known this is also one very surprising
picture to come out at the very end of an already wildly unpredictable year for
film and life in general.
Cassie
Thomas (Carey Mulligan) is a former college medical student who dropped out
after her best friend Nina was raped by fellow classmates and no one believed
her. Years later after moving back home
with her parents, scorned by her friend’s tragedy she spends every weekend
going to bars feigning blackout drunkenness before luring horny males home with
the promise of sex before confronting her prey with her sobriety and their lasciviousness,
closing in like a Venus flytrap. During
the weekdays however she works a local coffee shop and attracts the attention
of a former classmate wanting to date her, unaware of Cassie’s secret mission
to track down and bring the perpetrators of her friend’s attack to justice.
A
fresh, acerbic and darkly funny new take on the rape revenge thriller more interested
in addressing breaking the silences shared by the perpetrators and bringing a
buried crime to light, Promising Young
Woman is a confident writing-directing debut for Emerald Fennell commanded
by a striking central performance from Carey Mulligan. While already a fan of the actress’ work with
Nicolas Winding Refn and Steve McQueen, Mulligan owns this role of a vengeful
femme fatale diving deep into the hornet’s nest to expose her friend’s
wrongdoers. Plucky, sharp and cunning,
Cassie Thomas is always one step ahead of the game with those complicit in the
silences playing into her master plan.
For
a first time director, Fennell’s widescreen production bears the look of an
established auteur with lush cinematography by Benjamin Kračun giving the
picture a kind of De Palma look.
Boasting an eclectic mixture of pop radio tunes intercut with a brooding
score by Anthony Willis, Promising Young
Woman is a flashy looking and sounding film yet never diverts from its
single minded goal in hunting down and exposing the truth. Mulligan is no stranger to working with
intensely audiovisual directors and Fennell’s production boasts quite a
hyperkinetic palette.
A
wild and wicked revenge feminist dark comedy which will make you root for who
is probably the real heroine cinemagoers need right now, Promising Young Woman is a solid debut from a sharp and wise
industry veteran just now coming into her full bloom as an artist. Prominently featuring what could be Carey
Mulligan’s best performance yet as an actress, this is one of the year’s most
unexpected cinematic gifts tackling a difficult conversation with teeth and
impishness. In any case, Promising Young Woman presents what is
easily the most exciting female directorial debut since Agnieszka
Smoczyńska’s The Lure.
--Andrew Kotwicki
