“So, when I heard your name again,
I wondered, when was the last time anyone had said hers?” Promising Young Woman
isn’t just a female revenge movie -- it’s a mirror that forces us to confront
dark, ugly realities about our society and ourselves. “The first thing I said when I was
pitching Promising Young Woman to everyone is there’s literally nothing
in it (including the worst thing in it) that we haven’t seen in a comedy
and laughed at. Emerald Fennell’s feature directorial
debut centers on Cassie, a vigilante-of-sorts seeking vengeance for her best friend
Nina’s sexual assault years before. Cassie’s weapon of choice?
People’s idea of themselves as good, which she threatens by revealing
how badly they treat women. “Hey! I said what are you doing?” The film’s ending proves Cassie right
in the most depressing of ways -- and departs from pretty much every other
female revenge tale you’ve ever seen -- by concluding with our heroine dead, turned to ash by the same man
who hurt Nina. “This is not your fault, Al!” [Sobbing] “Thank you!” “You did nothing wrong. Alright.” But then, in the film’s final moments,
Cassie’s consolation is a different kind of revenge from beyond the grave. “You’re under arrest for the murder
of Cassandra Thomas.” The bittersweet victory of bringing
these transgressions to light underlines who is the
real antagonist of this movie: a deeply toxic system
and misogynistic culture that protects dangerous men
and devalues women. “One drunk photo at a party! Oh, you wouldn’t believe
how hostile that makes a jury.” Ultimately, the film suggests
that the first step toward redemption and systemic change is to look honestly
at the problem of rape culture and how our actions (or inactions)
may contribute to it -- in other words, exactly what we’re doing
in watching this movie. “I don’t know how we all could have
watched it and, um…” “What?” “Thought it was funny.” [Music] If you’re new here,
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our viewers a 30-day trial. Click the link in the description below
to discover a new handpicked film every day for free. [Music] “There’s no person in this film,
except for maybe one or two, who isn’t doing really something
that lots of people have done all the time, which has been culturally
and socially acceptable for years. The title “Promising Young Woman” evokes the idea of
the promising young man who’s been frequently defended
and handled with care when accused of
or charged with assault. “These two young men
that had such promising futures -- star football players,
very good students -- literally watched as- as they believed
their life fell apart. But the film reminds us
that this male-centric discourse erases the Promising Young Woman
who’s been assaulted and our concern for her well-being or promise. “She was just… Nina.
And then she wasn’t. She was yours.” Many revenge stories revolve around
highly sensationalized incidents of assault by hateable,
one-dimensional villains who might feel like anomalies. But Promising Young Woman's bad guys
are the norm -- regular people we see everyday and like, maybe even admire -- “Pediatric surgeon, huh?” “Yeah.” [Chuckles] “That’s very commendable. Thank you for all that you do
for the community.” -- and it’s ultimate villain
is a shared mentality that excuses their behavior. The movie starts off
by drawing our attention to the plague of “nice guy”-ism. “I’m a nice guy!” “Are you?” Cassie haunts bars pretending
to be extremely drunk, allows a “nice guy” to take her home,
then when he starts taking advantage, she reveals she’s not drunk. [Slurring] “I need to go home.” [Clear] “Hey Neil…
I said I need to go home. To play these secret creeps,
Fennell strategically casts beloved actors known for playing funny,
friendly roles -- as she put it, “people that we all want to like.” The point here is to debunk the myth that sexual predators
are shadowy figures removed from respectable society. The film suggests the nice guy
is actually more treacherous -- and omnipresent -- than our cartoonish idea
of what a rapist “looks like” -- “I’m a gentleman.” “Are you?” “Yeah.” [Laughs] “You might be surprised
to hear that ‘gentlemen’ are sometimes the worst.” because he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing,
functioning within the bounds of propriety -- “I’ll go over.” [Men hollering] “Jared!” “My god, I didn’t know
you had it in you!” “To see if she’s okay.” “Yeah, no, of course!” “Sure!” -- perhaps even pretending
to be a feminist. [Angrily whispering] “There’s just this
soul-sucking system meant to oppress women.” The nice guy’s attempt to exploit
seemingly drunk Cassie was long considered an acceptable part of
what Fennell terms “seduction culture,” presented by pop culture
as a harmless joke. “She’s totally gone! Have fun!” In examples like 1978’s Animal House or
the relatively recent Superbad in 2007, the protagonists consider
taking advantage of drunk women, even if they don’t go through with it. “Look at those gazongas!
You’ll never get a better chance.” “That way you’ll know she’ll be drunk.
You know when a girl’s saying, like, ‘Ahh, I was so shitfaced last night.
I shouldn’t have f[BLEEP] that guy.’ We could be that mistake!” And in the end, they’re rewarded
by getting the girl. “This is Larry Kroger, the boy
who molested me last month! We have to get married!” In Promising Young Woman,
we eventually learn that Al Monroe, the man who assaulted Nina
when they were in med school, is considered the ultimate nice guy. “He actually just came back
and gave a talk here… Oh, he’s a- he’s a really nice guy,
really smart.” When we finally meet Al,
at first it might be hard to see this rather generic, khaki-clad guy
as truly dangerous -- “I love my fiancé.” “Aww!” “And we’re getting married,
so, I- I- I don’t want any—" -- but this is the point. The portrait prompts us to ask ourselves if someone we liked
were to behave this way, would we readily condemn them? After Cassie reconnects
with her old classmate Ryan and is reminded that no one but her
holds Al’s assault of Nina against him -- “You still hand out with those guys?” [Long pause] “They’re not that bad.
They aren’t, really.” -- she starts on a quest to make each
participant in the event's aftermath reckon with how they failed Nina. Cassie’s first target
-- her old friend Madison -- reminds us that women can be
just as complicit in rape culture. As Madison spouts victim-blaming
and slut-shaming cliches -- “Don’t get… blackout drunk
all the time and then expect people to be on your side… [Whispers] when you have sex
with someone you didn’t want to.” -- we see how internalized misogyny
and the desire to remain in the in-group can motivate females to become some of
a male aggressor’s most vocal defenders. “If you have a reputation for sleeping
around then maybe people aren’t going to believe you when you say
something has happened. It’s… crying wolf!” Next, Cassie visits another woman
who represents the university’s response Dean Elizabeth Walker. “Because what would you
have me do? Ruin a young man’s life
every time we get an accusation like this? Excuses like this assume that young men
are frequently having their good names smeared by false accusations, when in fact a tiny minority
of accusations turn out to be false, while the much bigger problem is
that the vast majority of real assaults aren’t reported or investigated. Dean Walker’s priority to defend Al
against the highly unlikely event of a false accusation
instead of taking Nina’s word seriously underlines that -- even though Nina was at the top
of her class in med school -- the school didn’t value her
as much as it implicitly valued Al. “So, you’re happy to take the boy’s
Word for it?” “I have to give him the benefit
of the doubt.” Again, in both these scenes,
we see the intentionality of casting lovable actors Alison Brie
and Connie Britton, known for their accessible past roles, so that we might recognize ourselves
or people we like in these women. “None of us want to admit
when we’ve made ourselves vulnerable. When we’ve made a bad choice.” Cassie’s next visit,
to Al’s defense lawyer Jordan Green, sheds more light on how the system is formally set up
to protect men like Al. “I got a bonus for every
settlement out of court. I got another bonus for
every charge dropped. We all did.” Ultimately, the movie implies
that the true culprit is not a person, so much as a larger system
we're all part of that excuses this kind of misogyny on every level. It draws our attention to comments
and behavior that many of us have likely experienced
or considered “normal,” but which here appear damning,
like the defense of the guys’ youth -- “I was a kid. I—” “We- we were kids!” “If I hear that one more time.” -- pointing a finger
at Nina’s drunkenness -- “Look- when you get that drunk,
things happen.” “Well, if she was drinking,
and- and maybe couldn’t remember everything—” “So, she shouldn’t
have been drunk?” -- and implicitly trusting the “he”
in a “he said, she said.” “You said that it was too much
of a “he said, she said” situation.” But the script underlines
just what poor excuses these are, as well as how sick it is
that we’ve seen scenarios like these played for laughs in pop culture. “Maybe we should just take her
to the desert, bury her, and wash our hands
of this whole thing!” “Dude, what is the matter
with you?” “As his best man,
I would help him bury a hooker in the desert.” “You killed the stripper
at your bachelor party? What is this, the ‘90s?
Al, classic.” And we might start to understand
the real reason our culture conditions us to protect guys like Al; it wasn’t necessarily that people
didn’t believe Nina, but that they didn’t want to. They liked this guy,
wanted him in their lives, and preferred not to think
someone like him could do this, so they found it easier
to reject the facts. “I think the public has a
great deal of trouble… believing that someone they like…
could be a sex offender.” To drive home just how not nice
this wonderful guy everyone’s protecting is, the film concludes with him
smothering our protagonist to death in a harrowing two-and-a-half
minute sequence (which is how long Fennell’s retired cop
father-in-law told her it would take to suffocate someone). So many movies are willing to
kill a woman off but not to truly reckon
with the gravity of this violence. Take a recent example:
2019’s Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, where there’s an implication
that Brad Pitt’s character Cliff murdered his wife (who’s characterized as
a stereotypical nag, as if that excuses it). “They all said it. He’s a f[BLEEP] loser,
and I didn’t believe them. So, I guess I’m the f[BLEEP] idiot.” The crime itself is presented
as a quirk of Cliff’s character -- “He killed his wife
and got away with it.” [Long pause] “That guy?” “That guy.” -- and is never actually shown. In contrast, this scene makes us grapple
with the reality of violence against women. The camera actually pushes in,
making us look and hear her last breaths. [Muffled screaming] “And it needed to feel real.
Because it- it- it’s real. You don’t want to make…
it seem… less horrible than it is.” After Cassie dies,
we never see her face again, symbolizing how she's been turned
into another dehumanized victim -- and we feel the horror of this
because she’s us! We’ve spent the whole movie
seeing through her eyes. Crucially, the length of the suffocation
shot also makes it irrefutable that this isn’t an accident or self-defense; “nice guy” Al makes the
conscious decision to kill Cassie. But the next morning, Al’s friend Joe --
the person who filmed Nina’s assault, and apparently drugged women himself -- “Because if there is one thing
I learned at Forest, It’s how easy it is to slip something
into a drink… You’d think they’d remember that,
especially Joe.” -- still rushes to insist that Al’s done
nothing wrong, with an absurd eagerness. “This is not your fault.” [Sobbing] “I don’t know,
it kind of seems like it is.” “No! No! No! No! It’s not!” [Crying] There’s also a deeper meaning
in the song “Something Wonderful” that plays over the scene
of getting rid of Cassie’s body. [Song] “This is a man who tries.” Taken from the musical The King and I,
it's sung by the King’s wife who's pardoning his bad behavior
because sometimes he’s a good person and that evidently makes up for it. [Song] “Then, all at once,
he’ll do something… wonderful!” By playing this song over footage
of Al and Joe burning a dead body, the movie is showing just how far
we are willing to still stand by this “promising young man” when there’s cold hard evidence
that he’s nothing of the sort. [Music] Fennell says that she
“wanted to make a movie that subverted the revenge thriller.” One thing that sets
Promising Young Woman apart from other female revenge movies
is its distinctly feminine sensibility, which was influenced by pop culture gems
including Clueless, To Die For, The Virgin Suicides,
and Sweet Valley High. Its palette is composed of bright
candy colors, its soundtrack is pure pop -- [Song] “Even though the gods
are crazy / Even though the stars are blind!” -- and the film revels in Cassie’s
girly wardrobe, hairdos, and rainbow manicure. The story itself is part rom-com --
complete with a romantic montage. All these markers tell us
this is a movie made for women, not a traditionally masculine-feeling,
action-heavy revenge film. Thus, in its form, the movie also rejects our culture’s
default focus on the male experience -- “It’s about, uh, I guess, like,
what it’s like to be a guy right now, you know? Like, what it’s like to be a guy
in the world.” -- instead privileging the female
point of view. “It’s every guy’s worst nightmare
getting accused like that!” “Can you guess what every woman’s
worst nightmare is?” The opening scene shows men
at the bar gyrating to “Boys” by Charli XCX
(a song about thirsting after hot guys). [Song] “I was busy thinkin’ ‘bout boys.” This style of music video-esque
slow motion closeups has been used many times before
to film beautiful women, but turning this technique on realistic,
middle-aged male bodies makes them feel absurd -- and it sets up that the movie
is going to look close-up at the more grotesque aspects of male behavior,
through female eyes. Another subversion is the means
of Cassie’s revenge, which for most of the story
is totally non-violent. “What I wanted to do was try to write
a film about how an ordinary woman might take revenge in the real world,
and that’s very rarely reaching for a gun.” It’s only near the end --
when she poses as a stripper to get into Al’s bachelor party --
that Cassie does choose a level of violence. “You should be the one…
with her name… all over you.” But as we’ve seen,
the result is a far cry from the revenge-movie formula that dictates
a bloody victory over the bad guys. The original ending Fennell had in mind
did consist of Cassie murdering the men at Al’s bachelor party,
but she never actually wrote it. Why? “Because the moment Cassie
Is in that room, I realized that there is no way of honestly showing that.
Because it’s not true.” Up to this point in the movie witty,
self-assured Cassie feels incredibly powerful to us, but this scene reminds us
that ultimately she's a woman alone with a man who’s
physically stronger than her -- in this situation,
she would be overpowered. The first draft of the script concluded
with Al and Joe burning Cassie’s body, but Fennell decided to leave us
with a silver lining: we discover that Cassie
made arrangements because she understood
the potential danger she was walking into. “Somebody as meticulous as Cassie
does not go to a cabin in the middle of nowhere with a ton of drunk men, thinking that… something bad
might not happen. Cassie’s sassy pre-scheduled texts
to her ex-boyfriend Ryan and the evidence she sends
resulting in the coordinated arrest of Al at his wedding may be less cathartic
than violent revenge, but this conclusion is
actually more meaningful. It reminds us that the goal
isn’t to reciprocate violence; true progress is achieved
by exposing the problem and changing minds. The very first words of the movie
are a dismissive -- “F[BLEEP] her!” -- uttered about an unnamed woman
who could really be anyone -- and so the story gives us a full-circle
ending as Cassie issues the biggest “f[BLEEP] you” of all to the bad men
in her story. Still, the dark shadow over all of this
is that two promising young women had to die for a man’s crimes
to at last be taken seriously. And that’s why Promising Young Woman
eschews another common revenge-movie convention: using a woman’s pain
to motivate her growth (or even her transformation into some
kind of badass warrior-superhero). “By twenty, she was one of the top
female assassins in the world.” As Jessica Chastain tweeted in 2018: “violence against women […]
is not empowering […] yet so many films make it their
'phoenix' moment for women.” “Without Littlefinger and Ramsay
and the rest, I would have stayed a little bird all my life.” In Promising Young Woman,
trauma does not make women stronger -- it breaks them down. “And it just… squeezed her out.” It’s heavily implied that Nina
committed suicide. “Is your friend okay?” “No, she’s not.” Meanwhile, Cassie is consumed
by survivor’s remorse and her once-promising life has stalled. “You’re still living here at home!
working in that stupid coffee shop since you and Nina dropped out
of med school!” [Music] “I just thought that you were—” “Drunk?” “Yeah!” “Really drunk?” “Yeah.” “Well, I’m not.
But that’s good, isn’t it?” Fennell has said,
“so much of this film for me was about what happens when
good people […] find out that they're not good” “What are you trying to say?
That I’m… like a predator or something?” “I don’t know. Are you?” Early in the movie,
we might jump to the conclusion that Cassie is killing the nice guys. She’s introduced with hallmarks
of the serial killer trope, as if she’s preying on her victims. In actuality, she’s just making them
take a hard look at themselves. “What do you want from me?
To say that I’m an asshole?” But it’s kind of amazing how jarring
this is to them. As Fennell puts it,
“would I rather somebody knocked on my door and punched me in the face,
or would I rather they came to my door and said, ‘I know you think you're a
good person, but you're not’?” [Yelling] “Why do you guys
have to ruin everything?” Most characters respond to Cassie’s
holding up her mirror to their behavior by rejecting this unflattering image
of themselves, along with all accountability. “Tell me what you did!” [Screaming] “I didn’t do
anything wrong, though!” The film gives us its most fleshed-out
look at what it means to not take accountability
through someone who feels genuinely like a charming, funny,
and nice guy to us: Cassie’s love interest, Ryan. “Would you… be interested
in a friendship… And I’m secretly pining for you
the whole time?” One of the big twists of the movie
is that Ryan was an onlooker during Nina’s assault and did nothing. He embodies the problem with thinking
that passivity makes you innocent -- when in fact, if you’re not actively
standing up against this kind of attack, you also bear responsibility. “I don’t want to look at that, Cassie.” “Well, why not?
You were happy to watch back then.” A major takeaway of
Promising Young Woman is that a person’s chance at redemption
depends on how they choose to act on the knowledge that comes from
looking in Cassie’s mirror. Ryan has continued to stay friends
with these guys -- “I can’t shake them off.” -- and when he sees the video
of Nina’s assault, to a degree he seems to have forgotten
or repressed his memory of the experience. “I don’t remember. I- I don’t.” “Didn’t make an impact, huh?” In this movie’s outlook,
meriting forgiveness requires facing our mistakes. “And it’s ultimately, you know,
for me, a film about forgiveness… That- that people only get forgiveness
if they admit wrongdoing.” And if we still had any doubts
by the end, the film reinforces that Ryan
is unequivocally not a nice guy -- “And then we both won’t be doctors,
you f[BLEEP] failure.” “Nice!” -- as we watch him again “passively”
support Al’s transgressions in the name of self-preservation. “Staying out” of a matter
like the police asking you where your dead ex-girlfriend is, pretty much amounts to
siding with her killer. “Do you have any idea where she
might have been going to this weekend?” “She mentioned, uh, the work trip.” Madison and Dean Walker represent
another possible response to accountability -- they recognize their misdeeds,
but only once Cassie has tricked them into thinking their own lives
have been touched by sexual misconduct. [Whispers] “You’re right, okay?
Is that what you want to hear? You’re right!” “I guess you just had to think
about it in the right way. I guess it feels different
when it’s someone you love.” It’s also doubtful this materializes
into an overwhelming improvement in either’s empathy or behavior. When Madison gives Cassie the video
of Nina’s assault, she seems to think this absolves her
of further responsibility. “Do whatever you want with it,
just… leave me out of it. The best model of reform the film
gives us is Jordan Green. “And you most certainly won’t remember
the girl who you threatened and bullied until she dropped her case.” [Whispers] “I remember her.” What sets Jordan apart is that he wants
to face his past misdeeds. “No use hiding from the piper.
He has to be paid.” Throughout the film,
we see religious imagery, like Cassie in a position
that evokes Jesus’ crucifixion -- visually framing her as a martyr
for a greater cause. Production designer Michael Perry
also used imagery of angel wings and halos to underline Cassie’s role
as an “avenging angel.” In the scene where Cassie
confronts Jordan, the pair is deliberately meant to evoke
Michelangelo’s Pietà, of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus after the crucifixion. Cassie’s long blue dress in this scene
further likens her to Mary. And at its core, this scene embodies
another religious principle -- the idea that to be forgiven
you must confess and repent. “I’ll never forgive myself…
for any of this.” “I forgive you.” [Sigh of relief] At the end of the movie,
Cassie has sent Jordan the phone with the video of Nina’s assault,
revealing that he’s the one she most trusts to further her cause. So, this highlights that it’s within
everyone’s power to become part of the solution. Fennell named her righteous heroine
after the character Cassandra in Greek mythology,
a woman who was given the power of prophecy by Apollo
but was also punished by him so that her prophecies
would never be believed. Fear of disbelief is a common reason
that many survivors don’t report assault. “I’m not the only one
who didn’t believe it!” As the Me Too and Time’s Up movements
have gained traction in recent years, it seems like there is increasing
determination to listen to our real-world Cassandras,
but we have to do more than that. When we don’t value
promising young women, we do a huge disservice to them
and deprive the world of all that they have to offer. “You were way ahead
of everybody. You… you would have been
a great doctor.” As Chanel Miller reflected
on the aftermath of her assault case against Brock Turner: “it was so difficult to put into words
what was threatening to be lost. I couldn’t tell you:
If you continue to damage me, I may not be able to create murals
and books and all these wonderful creative things in different mediums […]
I knew I had so much to create.” Only by trusting and honoring
young women can we empower them to not just be promising,
but to actually fulfill their promise. “I wanted to be a doctor my whole life. But lately I’ve been feeling like
I might want to get back into it.” This is The Take on your favorite
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It's relationship to more traditional female revenge and power fantasies, is really interesting.
Makes me think of Fury Road, specifically the line from it's beginning "You cannot own a human being! Sooner or later, someone pushes back!"
Except, if you think too hard about it, that's basically a comforting lie. We would like to think that there is a karmic justice from the universe, that rape victims develop ninja superpowers, that crippled and beaten down slaves will revolt with a righteous strength and fury, that struggle builds character.
But if you are the one holding power, you can in fact keep pushing people until they break down, and go away. Injustice doesn't have a loophole that makes it destroy itself, it kills people and then it keeps killing them.
It's something that we all have to stare into directly, and decide what we want to do about it.
I really think this is an important movie. I was initially put off by the stereotypical portrayals and lack of subtlety. As the movie went on, I realized that people just won't "get" these issues if they aren't presented in such an overt way. Really interesting.
The key movie of our time.
This is brilliant.
One of my favorite films of last year covered by one of my favorite media analysis channels on YT, I must’ve missed this one— appreciate you sharing it! Go watch the film if you haven’t yet, it’s definitely one that’ll stay in your head rent free for a while.
Shame the trailer spoiled so much of the movie.