There’s a curdled undercurrent of anger to Promising Young Woman—the writing-directing feature debut of actor Emerald Fennell—that belies its heavily stylized, almost breezy aesthetic. Carey Mulligan stars as Cassandra, a med-school dropout who spends her nights pretending to be drop-dead drunk at clubs, waiting for a “nice” guy to offer to take her home. Inevitably, he attempts some sort of clumsy assault (the same routine plays out each week) and each time the feigning Cassandra turns the tables on the creep. Given the style Fennell brings to all this—the hot pink, comic-book font of the opening credits, the snarky pop soundtrack, the heroic framing of Mulligan (not to mention Mulligan’s invincible performance)—you’d be forgiven for thinking of this as a vigilante superhero flick (say, a Me Too take on Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman, from Batman Returns). Cassandra even hides her secret identity from her parents, whom she lives with; has a couple of Joker-like moments applying smeared makeup while looking in a mirror; and dons a color-streaked, Harley Quinn-style wig for the climactic confrontation. But as we learn more about the past incident that motivates Cassandra, Promising Young Woman becomes less of a Coffy-style, genre revenge picture and more of a real-world exploration of the trauma of sexual assault. The two tones are not always the most seamless fit, while some of the narrative—including a subplot with a potentially actual nice guy, played by Bo Burnham—relies a bit too much on deus ex machina developments. But there’s no doubt that Fennell has made something that shows impressive filmmaking promise and pulses with real pain.
