Cassie could have become something. She studied medicine and she was good. But then the thing happened with her best friend. Nina was raped at a college party. Since then, Cassie, played by Carey Mulligan, has had only one goal: revenge.
She hangs out in clubs, apparently dead drunk and defenseless. In the very first scene of the film “Promising Young Woman” she can be seen like this, on red leather, with her head bowed, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. Every week Cassie has guys towed her who want to take advantage of her condition. Until she suddenly reveals herself to be sober and wide awake – and makes the supposedly nice men aware that they are about to commit an assault. She keeps a tally sheet. Every time someone falls into the trap.
The title “Promising Young Woman” stands for the promising young woman who both Cassie and her best friend Nina once were, and it resonates with the many real cases in which promising young men were mentioned, such as Brett Kavanaugh or Brock Turner. This was the student who attacked his unconscious fellow student Chanel Miller on the Stanford campus in 2015. There was a lot of talk then about his future as a swimmer; the judge ruled that a prison term would have “grave consequences” and sentenced Turner to only six months in prison. There was no mention of the effects on women.
The film has been called “Me Too” revenge thriller, but it’s more than that
The film should be understood against this starting point and, of course, against the background of everything that has happened in recent years in terms of equality and sexual violence. The film has been called “Me Too” revenge thriller, but it’s more than that. This is where pop culture and media audiences of the noughties are being renegotiated, with the realization that not everything was as innocent as one would believe. And at the same time, the whole thing – surprise with this difficult topic – is great fun.
It is the directorial debut of Emerald Fennell, who appears as Camilla Parker Bowles from the series The Crown can know and the showrunner Killing Eve was. She also wrote the script for her first feature film and won an Oscar for it. The start has been postponed again and again due to the corona, now the film can be seen in German cinemas.
Carey Mulligan plays Cassie in it, but she actually plays a lot of women at once. During the day she sells coffee and wears floral dresses, in the evening she puts on blow job lips based on YouTube tutorials. Fennell ties in with the rape revenge film genre, the rape of a woman is the starting point of the plot. Only this time it is not the father or friend of the victim who avenges them, but the best friend. Vengeance remains in female hands, and that is also to be understood aesthetically. Cassie is not in combat suit and with a saber like Uma Thurman is in Kill Billbut in pink. Only once, it is so far that it smashes a car, almost casually, in the background Wagners increases Tristan and Isolde from off to the final.
Paris Hilton was Gloss personified in the noughties, the hotel heiress who became a reality star
The pop music references are even more defining. Fennell relies on two characters who grew up in the media of the early two thousand meter peaks. In a scene that is reminiscent of a nostalgic Romcom, touchingly beautiful and cheesy, Cassie can be seen with Ryan in a pharmacy. She is seriously interested in him, played great by the comedian Bo Burnham. A song is playing, Ryan is humming along, and Cassie asks, Excuse me, are you singing Paris Hilton? Until they both sing and dance and the scene turns into a montage of their introductory scenes. Paris Hilton, that was Gloss personified in the noughties, of course, the hotel heiress who became a reality star and then also thought she had to sing. And the success of her attention was always attributed to the fact that she was the protagonist of an actually private sex video that was rapidly spreading. She later spoke about her ex releasing the film without her consent. That it felt like rape to her. Today you would call it revenge porn, back then you laughed about it in the schoolyard.
The second media figure Fennell’s musical references rely on is Britney Spears. When Cassie sets off to the climax of her act of revenge, disguised as a stripper with hair colored with chewing gum, a string version of Spears’ hit “Toxic” can be heard, violins cut the air threateningly. So again music that was successful, but was considered “something for girls”.
While Paris Hilton has a cooking show and a podcast today and is still not taken seriously, the public view of Britney Spears has recently changed fundamentally. After a mental breakdown, she was placed under her father’s tutelage in 2008; a state from which she just seems to be successfully breaking free. The documentary “Framing Britney Spears” also contributed to the new perspective of a broader public. And which reveals the mechanisms of misogyny and sensationalism of the show system.
The university dean: “We hear such accusations all the time”
“Promising Young Woman” also looks at Hilton and Spears from this perspective – as women who have been wronged. Throughout the film, characters can be seen playing down rape and blaming the victim (the university dean: “We hear such accusations all the time”; the girlfriend: “When you get so drunk, things happen”). An uncomfortable feeling arises, a bit like this like watching the flat box office hit comedies from back then again today, with all the sexist, racist and homophobic jokes. What people used to laugh about.
The film tells not only about revenge, but also about forgiveness. Again and again the camera position provides religious allusions, Cassie as a martyr, as an angel of vengeance. At one point it appears to be surrounded by a halo, then the headboard of a bed becomes wings. In very symmetrical pictures she sits in the middle of sofas, but in reality nothing is in balance here. One could blame this figure for being one-dimensional, just an allegory, Cassandra, the seer who is unheard. That it consists of little more than its revenge. She lives with her parents, earns little money, doesn’t care about her life. But maybe a trauma like hers is just the same: all consuming. Without wanting to reveal too much here, the main weakness of the film lies in its ending. At least after many exciting chapters of revenge the question remains: And now?
The film is about the structures, as is shown not least by the references to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. Not about the monsters like Harvey Weinstein, but about everyone who upholds a sexist system. The focus on the normal types is already evident in the casting, the men in the night clubs are played by actors who are often cast as nice, funny boys. All the more astonishing that there were discussions about the casting of the film in advance. A film critic indirectly accused Carey Mulligan of not being sexy enough to star.
Mulligan struggled. That too would hardly have happened twenty years ago.