“Can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is?”
Emerald Fennell, the British screenwriter and director of Promising Young Woman could have easily titled her genius debut this. But in a similar vein, she took perverse inspiration from convicted sex offender Brock Turner’s alternate label as a “promising young man,” and applied it to one of the most satisfying and mind-inhabiting films of 2020. Filthy thieves attend Stanford, too.
In Fennell’s framed space, the grand theft of consent to enter one’s own body is never seen. Oscar nominee and BAFTA winner Carey Mulligan’s Cassandra “Cassie” Thomas and her lifelong friend Nina Fisher (only depicted in framed photos) both attended medical school, the latter of whom was top of her class when Nina is raped one night at a party attended by other students. Who witnessed. And did nothing but watch. Nina and Cassie, spiritual twins, both drop out of medical school after the life-altering incident.
Years later, Cassie is working at a coffee shop somewhere in Ohio, and living at home with her parents Susan (Jennifer Coolidge) and Stanley (Clancy Brown). Cassie endures the slow death of untreated PTSD, fed by an intense hatred for rapists who go to bars looking for drunk women to attack where and when convenient. Aside from her boss Gail (Laverne Cox), her parents, and the predators she easily finds at bars to momentarily twirl the foul worlds of, she leads a solitary life void of the youthful excitement of new loves, destinations, and self-discovery for regular growth. Fennell’s script is a powerfully faithful representation of the psychic damages caused by PTSD.
Despite being insulted by a former medical school peer turned pediatrician for working a blue-collar job (while at her job, to boot), Cassie attempts the normalcies of Millennial courting with plain guy Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham). The vast mountain of trust-building is incredibly daunting and sometimes impossible for individuals both young and old living with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder. Mulligan intuitively projects the vulnerability of a woman who clearly identifies men as the more morally repugnant sex that assesses women as secondary to the male human order. The mutual attraction may be developing between Cassie and Ryan, yet she still becomes untrusting and pissed off, when he leads them to his apartment building while on a night stroll.
The message most loudly echoed by perpetrators and accomplices alike in Promising Young Woman is that traumas are forgettable events. This implies that the passage of time somehow expunges the wages of acts that are analogous to the victims/survivors collapsing in on themselves, due to the destruction of their personal foundation by others. Dr. Larry Nassar did this to hundreds of adult and child gymnasts for decades while employed by USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. Dr. Richard Strauss sexually assaulted male athletes affiliated with The Ohio State University for decades. Authority figures knew. Colleagues could not feign ignorance. But they expected forgetfulness. The kind of encouraged self-induced amnesia that Dean Elizabeth Walker (Connie Britton) and Madison McPhee (Alison Brie) seemingly drowned themselves in with the additives of ego and alcoholism.
So it is no surprise that a British filmmaker located her treatise on socially perpetuated attitudes on and behaviors of sexual violence in the United States. In a state (Ohio) that has twice been won by the worst president in American history. Who happens to also be a well-documented recipient of rape and sexual assault allegations.
The insightful riches of Promising Young Woman delivers an unforgettable visual dialogue with an ethically deficient country, and its dysfunctional processes of declarative value for our inefficient wounded and go-getter predators. Emerald Fennell’s script for the ages demonstrates that the “fucking failures” among the American People are not those who work menial labor jobs, live with their parents into their 30s, and are daily terrorized by the residual carnage of rape—even if it wasn’t them who personally experienced it. It is the spineless ones, often professionals with offices, business cards, and stellar reputations built on devilish manipulation dressed in false exceptionalism.
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