Promising Young Woman: Review of Emerald Fennell’s new movie

When first watching the trailer for “Promising Young Woman,” I was under the impression that the movie would be about a cunning, badass girl running from the law as she takes down sex offenders, a question of morals.

I didn’t know it would have the impact that it did. 

While my initial first impression from the trailer held true, this film highlights the effect sexual assult and rape have on everyone involved — even the offenders. 

Director Emerald Fennell’s first movie “Promising Young Woman” features Cassie Thomas (played by Carey Mulligan), who dropped out of medical school after an assault on her best friend, Nina. An encounter with an old friend from Forester University (played by Bo Burnham) gives her the chance to right the wrongs from her college years. 

Since Cassie dropped out of college, she’s been stuck and trapped in the past. She has a high schooler’s job, lives in her parents’ house that’s covered in soft pink 80’s decor and strange paintings of dogs and wears pastel clothes with bows in her hair. 

Throughout the plot and through Mulligan’s performance, we find out that Cassie is incredibly smart. Every person who was involved in dismissing Nina’s case is her target, and for each, she knows exactly how to make them feel the way she felt when Nina was assaulted and no one would do anything about it. But Mulligan makes the role far more real — Cassie’s pain comes across without her having to utter a single line.

She had been remarkably ahead of her classmates in school and was passionate about becoming a doctor. She had so much promise and it was all taken from her. Nobody gave her or Nina the benefit of the doubt. 

After finishing the first movie, Fennell’s message is clear: Nina’s offender is living a happy life as a doctor with a fiance, while Nina slips away from herself bringing Cassie with her. 

“Promising Young Woman” brings up familiar arguments about rape and sexual assult allegations and puts them into a perspective that every viewer can understand, using all aspects from the casting to the plot. It’s intriguing how fast Cassie can change the minds of her targets when she puts them in Nina’s place and the truth of their actions are imposed onto them.  

I shot up from my couch and yelled “NO!” at my TV when I saw Max Greenfield. Television hotshots like Greenfield, who plays Joe Macklemore, and Chris Lowell, who plays Al Monroe, are perfect for these roles, as they’re loved from their past work. The whole time I was trying not to let my deep-rooted love for Greenfield cloud my judgement on his character’s actions. 

“In many ways, it’s a revenge thriller, it’s a romantic comedy, it subverts a lot of tropes we’re used to seeing,” Fennell said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. 

One character even went as far to say that what happened to Nina was her own fault. “She had a reputation for sleeping around, it was basically crying wolf,” Madison says in a scene with Cassie. 

Other common sayings are sprinkled throughout the film, where we hear things like “I had to give them the benefit of the doubt, I couldn’t ruin a young man’s life,” along with “why do [women] have to ruin everything?”

I really loved the complexity of the situation in the plot. I think it was a needed veer from the black and white coverage and understanding of similar real-life affairs. 
It’s well known that sexual assault and rape are wrong in every way, but “Promising Young Woman” shows you why. Why the way society treats people who go through this can be so damaging. Why not doing anything to stop the offender puts you in the wrong. And why the lack of punishment — or even reprimanding — for the offender reinstates the lie “it’s not your fault, it’s theirs.”

More info on sexual assault against college student at rain.org.