Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, April 17, 2020) Movie • Page 2

I wasn't ready to hear Tami Taylor use profanity.

 

What a strange movie.

What was the point of going after all of those random men when she had a much bigger fish to fry? She is supposed be teaching a lesson to someone who would almost certainly have raped her, but at the same time the person who did rape and did lead her friend to suicide is out there. Why was she saving him for last? The best friend not looking to cause trouble and the dean failing to properly investigate the crime are both guilty of something but it is far less than the rapist himself. It is also an issue that those two characters are also women, which suggests that the patriarchy forces even other women into propagating the system but does not do much with it.

Why make such a big scene of waiting until the wedding instead of having Doctor Octopus immediately contact the police when she does not return? Why put your faith into a man who was originally your enemy and had had a nervous breakdown? The investigators say she intentionally turned the tracker on her phone off, but that would have potentially made it easier for the police to find her body.

When she decides to abandon her revenge mission, there is a bit of a suggestion that the film is examining the dead-end nature of revenge, but it ends up quasi-celebrating her suicide mission because the rapist is getting arrested and humiliated on his wedding day, so that is out of the window. However, what is the message to be gleaned from that? Since the rapist is being arrested for murder, it suggests that all of the onlookers get away with it, including her boyfriend (the most obvious plot twist of the year). Releasing the video could have done more damage and she would not have had to die, which is something she thought was a very high possibility given the preparation she took.

 

All of this.

Why sacrifice her own life for a lesser consequence for her offenders?


I know Tetra doesn't care about spoilers, but I do so...

 

She is depicted as a master planner, weaving these webs for all of the people that wronged her, but if the rapist and his friend had taken a little bit more time disposing of the body, then it becomes very hard to prove. It goes from the sort of slam dunk the movie thinks it is to yet another situation where the rapist uses his money to get another lawyer that gets him off without consequence.

At the risk of going into Cinema Sins territory, the film relies on a tremendous amount of circumstance and suspension of disbelief, which makes her perfect revenge seem more like an accident than anything meaningful.

 

Gonna try and address some of the questions posed in this thread as well as my own thoughts on this. Also apologies for kind of word vomitting about this. Pretty confident that the point of her going after random men was to protect other potential women from what happened to Nina. Basically taking preventative measures. As someone who isn't a rape/assault survivor but has dealt with trauma due to negligence from adults and bystanders, this hit me pretty hard. I've often wondered what those conversations and confrontations could be like. We can debate the methods used by Cassie and such but I can relate to the desire to make people who failed Nina aware of how their actions stacked on top of others' to create a massive ripple effect and all around failure of one person's life. I don't think Cassie was planning or expecting to die but I do think she knew it was a potential outcome and was willing to take that risk. Whether that's right or wrong on her part isn't really for me to say. I think the scheduled messages were all put in place in the event that she was killed and that there would've been some other course of action had she made it out of the party alive. I'm sure there are plenty of people who are significantly smarter than me who have better, more coherent thoughts on the movie as a whole but I ultimately found it incredibly effective and thought provoking.

 

I can see both sides of the argument on this movie, and I completely respect why some are very upset by the ending and how many are interpreting it. However, I really loved this. Carey Mulligan knocks it out of the park

 

I’m digesting this movie but it was really affecting and thought-provoking. I also know a lot of people are discussing the themes and such but I also just want to point out how incredible the score and cinematography are, really encapsulates the tone.

overall very disturbing and dare I say great movie—but man, that smothering scene really upset me and got under my skin

 

yeah, i was kinda blown away by this. wow.

 

Sam Richardson being a douche and Bo Burnham being hot and Jennifer Coolidge being a brunette were very jarring
this was definitely a different movie then I was expecting especially from the reactions, besides wishing we got to see flashbacks of Nina and got to know her outside Cassie's memory I enjoyed it

 

surprised you didn’t comment on stars are blind. or any other needle drops

 

this unfortunately didn’t work for me to the degree i hoped but i’m willing to try again. glad others dug it

 

I feel like they've been discussed enough haha

 

makes sense

 

Really really loved this. Big Veronica Mars energy. Agree with Ian that it was very hard to watch Sam Richardson be an asshole. And I have to say I really did not expect to laugh so much at this? Especially in parts where the movie pretty clearly wants to make you feel uncomfortable laughing, like basically Max Greenfield’s entire performance — which honestly reminded me a lot of Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading

 

Wow, this movie was craaaazy

 

I’m not mad I saw this, I had a mostly good time with it, but it just doesn’t sit right with me the more I think about it. The sadness and trauma that pulsates through every minute of it is truly something only a woman could imbue into a film like this... but it did not stick the landing for me at all.

About halfway through I thought it might be about learning to move forward with your trauma and building a life for yourself... so the ending was incredible upsetting for me. Cassie dying for this, having spent the “best” years of her life deeply traumatized and ultimately sacrificing herself at the altar of this cause for possibly nothing, was so insulting to me as a survivor of sexual assault.
I wanted to love this. It was so nice to look at and Carey Mulligan gives a huge performance. But I saw a Letterboxd review that said it was “girl-bossing rape revenge films” and honestly... yeah. That’s about how I ended up feeling.

 

I think the movie is definitely aware of how futile it all feels in the end. Not necessarily something I wanted from this, but it doesn’t feel accidental.

 

Thank you for sharing this. I'm definitely still sorting through how I feel about this. There's so much to unpack.

 

I enjoyed this movie but didn't quite love it. I had some issues with the story, especially the ending, but damn it was shot so well and the music was something else haha.

Also, the cast was pretty fantastic. Carey should at least get an Oscar nom, and hopefully Bo Burnham too.

 

Hmm this didn't sit right with me by the end. Carey Mulligan is great in it, though.

 

I understand a lot of the criticism but I was kind of blown away by this. Carey was fantastic and Bo was really great as well.

 

i have a lot of questions for her and they’re almost all about the crown

 

Gonna need more time to think on this one, but immediate reaction is that it was unique and very effective. Polarizing as it may be, the performances were just excellent all around.

 

I loved it until the end. Didn’t like how they stuck that ending at all

absolutely effecting though