PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN **1/2
IDEA: After the fallout of her best friend's rape, a young woman devises a plot to get back at abusive men and other sexual assault-abetting accomplices.
BLURB: On the surface, from premise to aesthetics, Promising Young Woman augurs a bold pop-feminist take on the #MeToo movement. Whether it’s the fluorescent-hued, borderline expressionistic mise-en-scène or the revenge narrative spin, Fennell employs the pleasing sheen of genre to take aim at the insidious grasp of rape culture. And yet, subversive in ways admirable and dubious, Promising Young Woman complicates both its feminism and its pulp, as well as the catharsis expected from a putative tale of retribution. To wit: Cassie’s “revenge” spree, which abandons violence in favor of a campaign of shaming. Delivered by Mulligan with no-guff, vexed incredulity, Cassie’s table-turning incriminations carry a satisfaction perhaps more potent than any actual bloodletting. As Cassie progresses through her marks, Fennell effectively adumbrates the chain of aiding and abetting that normalizes rape through silence, complacency, willful denial, and entrenched sexist attitudes about what men are entitled to. While the director mostly navigates her tricky tone with aplomb, mining teeth-gritting tension and squirmy humor from sharp-tongued tête-à-têtes, she also seems increasingly unable to decide what her film is really trying to do. If this is intended to be an anthem of female empowerment, then why the third-act twist, which only compounds the degree to which Cassie (and, by extension, the deceased friend she’s avenging) is defined and confined by her trauma? Why the rousing ending, when survival for sexual assault victims is essentially denied? There is a sense that Fennell has sacrificed the real-world implications of her script for the element of dramatic surprise. The results are troubling, but Fennell at least realizes there are productive conversations to be had around something that doesn’t provide an easy resolution.
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