Magical Mulligan in career-best form Dynamic debut from helmer Fennell
Promising Young Woman may only have took home one of the five Oscars it was nominated for at Sunday’s Academy Awards but Carey Mulligan can count herself very unlucky not to scoop the Best Actress prize.
The Londoner is in superb – and against type – form as Cassandra, a woman who seeks out vengeance against those who crossed her path following a traumatic event in her past.
To go into too much more detail would be a disservice to debut feature length writer-director Emerald Fennell’s clever and topical Best Original Screenplay Oscar-winning script.
What initially lures you into thinking it’s a typical revenge thriller veers off into unexpected territory and will even challenge your beliefs and morals.
The colourful palette Fennell (Killing Eve) opted to use wouldn’t look out of place in a Harley Quinn movie and, at times, Cassandra acts like she could easily partner up with the DC antiheroine.
However, Fennell gets more under the skin of her leading lady, and fellow Londoner, and uses the medium of film to spread an important message about the way women are often treated by the opposite sex.
It isn’t preachy, though, and whereas a lot of other flicks in the past couple of years have hammered home a profemale rhetoric, Fennell channels it through dark humour and with good cause, while not all of Cassandra’s targets are male.
Familiar faces like Adam Brody and Christopher Mintz-Plasse fill their roles well and there’s the welcome presence of Highlander’s Clancy Brown as Cassandra’s dad Stanley.
Jennifer Coolidge is fun as our lead’s mother Susan but her oddball turn is a little jarring given much of what is going on around her.
I don’t often flag up costume designers but Nancy Steiner really earned her money by kitting Cassandra out in a series of memorable outfits fit for her every need.
Promising Young Woman’s true strength is its supercharged antiheroine with Mulligan matching anything she’s produced thus far – and that includes some attention-grabbing work – as an avenging angel fit for these troubled times.
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