On the hunt for sick minds
Cert
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Mulligan keeps us on Cassie’s side as she goes through the menfolk of her US town
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
15 ★★★
On Now and Sky Cinema now
For those of you who are sick of seeing worthy, issue-based dramas win the big awards, Emerald Fennell’s twotimes Bafta-winning and five-times Academy Awards-nominated debut may sound like a welcome surprise.
Like the films Hard Candy, Ms. 45 and the seven I Spit On Your Grave movies, Promising Young Woman is a pulpy, rape-revenge fantasy.
Up until now, these films haven’t carried ambitions higher than video shop shelves and high-numbered digital channels. But the Harvey Weinstein scandal hasn’t just shaken Hollywood boardrooms, it has moved the goalposts for the issue-based awards movie.
For a while at least, that seems like a very welcome change.
Fennell’s brilliant opening takes us to a nightclub where a gang of leery men have spotted Carey Mulligan’s seemingly plastered Cassie laying on a sofa.
One of them breaks from the pack and gallantly offers to take her home.
Then he makes a worrying suggestion. Would she like to pop into his apartment for another drink?
But Cassie isn’t a drunken victim, she’s an avenging angel. Since her best friend was assaulted at university, the medical school dropout has been using her drunken routine to force seemingly nice men to confront their inner rapists.
Mulligan keeps us on Cassie’s side as she goes through the menfolk of her unnamed US town but there’s a flash of madness about her too.
Sadly, Fennell’s cynical script is far less nuanced. As Cassie’s victims start to stack up, the sermonising begins to grate, all credibility flounders and the film loses its edge.
Could this ruse really work for years in the same city? How many nightclubs does it have? And does every one of them have its own closet Weinstein?