Promising Young Woman (2020)

 Score: 4.5 / 5

A devastating directorial (and feature film screenwriting) debut for Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman might be the most complex and ambitious movie I've seen all year. Aggressively undefinable by genre, it weaves its characters and plot through black comedy to revenge thriller, from coming of age drama to romantic comedy, and it does so effortlessly. I found myself repeatedly laughing aloud and then stifling gasps; sometimes even choking back laughs that weren't going to be welcome in the auditorium at large. It's an emotionally exhausting experience, one that is never less than hilarious or horrifying, sometimes within the same scene.

The opening scene sets things up perfectly. A group of young business men -- the kind who probably left undergrad from frat row within the last few years -- drinking at a bar begin to comment upon a young woman, clearly intoxicated to the point of losing consciousness, sitting alone in a compromising position on a red leather sofa. What begins as a sort of bizarre slut-shaming conversation shifts into them commenting on how pretty she is, and which of them should try to rouse her and hope for more than casual acquaintance. Finally one, the "nice guy" goes over to her and offers to help her leave. They can't find her phone, so he offers to order her pickup vehicle. In the car, his tactics change until he redirects the driver to his own apartment. Is he going to let her sleep on the sofa to make sure she's okay? Maybe, until he sits a little too close and puts his arm around her. Then it's on, and as he removes her panties, she rouses and confronts him, suddenly stone-cold sober and with a devilish glint in her eye. She's going to teach him a lesson about being a predator.

It's a brilliant premise, and the movie delivers time and again as Cassie, the young woman, apparently goes to bars and clubs with alarming frequency to enact the same scenario with other unsuspecting men. Fennell is working from a place of anger, turning it into productively painful scenes of "nice guys" revealing the dark side of sexist objectification and ignorance (willful, of course) of sexual consent. And just as things seem a bit too on-the-nose, Fennell pulls out the rug beneath us for a third-act twist that demolishes our hopes for a romantic comedy and pushes things into hardcore satire that will no doubt alienate some audience members.

But the movie is far more than just a black comedy, and it is held together by a magnificent Carey Mulligan doing some of her best work yet. Cassie is a tough role, one that could have easily been played for camp value, and Mulligan imbues her with so much inner conflict and pain, so much internalized guilt and externalized hatred, that she will, I expect, go on to become an icon of twenty-first century female characters. Mulligan is joined by a surprising but excellent cast firing on all fronts, including sudden scenes with Laverne Cox, Alison Brie, Alfred Molina, Connie Britton, Molly Shannon, Max Greenfield, Jennifer Coolidge, Clancy Brown, and Adam Brody. Everybody kills it, so to speak, following a brilliant supporting performance from Bo Burnham, whose casting in a particularly thankless role here is a stroke of genius.

In case you forget, by the third act twist, that this is all meant to be a bleak and damning comedy, Fennell keeps her visual style relatively light, slathering candy-colored hues across costumes, sets, and makeup. She pumps ironic and catchy tunes through the soundtrack -- I especially loved a sly inclusion of Britney Spears's "Toxic" just before the climax -- to keep us in that sweet spot between comfortable and on edge. And even when the film threatens to skim over real character development, motivation, exposition, or thematic depth, Fennell organically answers our questions, satisfies our sympathetic need for connection, and allows her film to breathe before jumping back into the meat of her thematic odyssey. It's a brilliant work, and I can't wait to see more.

I should note that the only reason I didn't award this movie a full five points is a result of the end. Some may love it, and I certainly like it as it is, but I do wish Cassie had a different conclusion to her own story. To say anything more would spoil it, but if you've seen it, I'd love to hear your thoughts! As vaguely as I can, I guess I just don't see the necessity of her exit strategy, and I think she could have accomplished her endgame without sacrificing too much. But maybe that's exactly the point.