*Warning: Contains Spoilers*
I watched this one several months ago, and it took me a while to write this review because processing this movie was like processing a life-changing experience. I won’t say that the movie changed my life, but it FELT that way: exhilarated, horrified, flushed with adrenaline, and oddly at peace. It wasn’t a rollercoaster. It was more like getting buried alive and then rescued. There was a sense of “This is the worst thing that could ever happen. If I can handle this, I can handle anything.”
Promising Young Woman follows Cassandra (played by Carey Mulligan), a former medical student who dropped out after the rape and subsequent suicide of her best friend Nina: a promising young woman who she’d been close to since early childhood. Cassandra copes with the trauma by pretending to be drunk in public places and letting random guys take her home and try to take advantage of her. It’s a clever way to address the issue of consent, and the way she confronts the men once they realize that she’s sober is nothing short of brilliant.
My favorite scene is one I think should be taught in sex ed classes. The guy brings her home, babbling on about himself and his novel and how amazing he is while she’s seemingly semiconscious. He starts to move in for the kill, and she comes awake completely and basically goes, “What the fuck are you doing?”
He freaks out and asks her to leave. She asks why he brought her home, and he says, “I thought we had a connection.” She says, M-hm. What’s my last name?
This is something that needs to be shoved in the face of every man who doesn’t think that getting a girl drunk equals rape. He thought she was drunk, but if he really thought they had a “mental connection,” he should have been delighted that she was actually sober and capable of holding a conversation. Instead he was horrified. We don’t talk enough about the myth of sex as conquest, but this scene cuts past the bullshit and goes in for the kill in a way Mr. Genius Artist could not.
Fun little side note: Cassandra is the name of a character from Greek mythology who spurned Apollo’s advances and as punishment was gifted with foresight but whose predictions would never be believed. Almost nobody listens to this Cassandra either, and it leads to their undoing.
The entire cast is brilliant, but Bo Burnham shines especially bright as Ryan, Cassandra’s love interest and HashtagNiceGuy. He is kind, he is thoughtful, he is charming, and he is an absolute piece of human garbage in the most disturbingly believable way. Cassandra falls hard for him, and she starts to give up her nightly revenge quests. Then she finds out that he was present at the rape of her friend, laughing and joking along with the rest of the witnesses. When she confronts him about this, instead of being contrite and apologetic and, you know, acting like a decent fucking human being, he goes on the defensive and verbally attacks her. Throughout the movie he was supportive and sympathetic about her decision to quit law school and work in a coffee shop, but his last words to her after the confrontation about his own shameful past are, “You fucking failure.”
At that moment, I said out loud, “Ah, there it is.” We all know someone like Ryan. Some of us have dated someone like Ryan. Fortunately most of us will never know how much like Ryan our own exes are, because what he does next is beyond our experiences. If we’re lucky.
Cassandra confronts Nina’s rapist Al (played by Gabriel Oliva), threatens to mark up his body with a razor, and he smothers her to death in a drunken rage. Al and his best friend burn her body and cover up the crime, but her quest for justice isn’t over. It turns out she sent lawyer Jordan Green (played by the brilliant but underutilized Alfred Molina) all the information and evidence needed for the police to find her body and charge the rapist-turned-killer.
And Ryan? That sweet, charming boy who seemed to turn Cassandra’s life around and teach her to love again in the second act? Lied about what he knew to the cops. He knew that she’d gone to confront Al, but when the police questioned him after her disappearance, he implies that she was suicidal after their breakup. He knew she’d been murdered, and he knew who had done it. And he covered for the killer, just like he’d covered for the rapist.
How far does the Bro Code extend? the movie asks. One question among many. How far will the average man go to protect another man from consequences, especially if those consequences might impugn upon his own good name?
I have a lot more to say about this movie, but I’m going to stop here for now for the sake of my readers’ attention span. Tune in next week (or the week after, depending on how my schedule decides to treat me) and we’ll talk about Madison, an old classmate of Cassandra’s and a victim of her unique brand of justice.
Dawn Napier 