I don’t have one particular theme to talk about today – instead, there are a handful of elements I want to look at from Promising Young Woman, aspects of the film that really stuck with me or that I’m still mulling over. Getting into definite spoilers, so this is your warning.
The opening shots of the film are so striking. It’s an exuberant weekend night at the bar, and the finance bros have hit the dance floor. Set against the pulsing beat of the music, these men are captured solely in pieces – torsos, asses, groins, but never a shot that shows all of them, never a shot that shows their faces. It’s immediately weird, a little startling, and quickly becomes comical. But director Emerald Fennell really knows what she’s doing here. Attractive women are filmed like this all the time, the camera hovering over their boobs or hips or asses, showing them as parts instead of people. Right from the start, it’s a way for the film to reorient your gaze.
I mentioned it briefly in my original review of the film, but I just love how it goes in so hard on the concept of Nice Guys. Pretty much every single man we see Cassie catch in her predator trap is a Nice Guy. Her whole scheme is built around the ultimate Nice Guy premise of being the “white knight” who nobly swoops in to “save” a young woman who’s had too much to drink, chivalrously offering to take her home so no creep tries to take advantage of her in her vulnerable state. And then, hey, if they’re driving by his apartment on the way, why not stop and head up for a quick nightcap, right? Catching guys who rape incapacitated women under the guise of being considerate and helpful is what she does. But the film draws those lines even clearer. The first guy we see her catch notices her at the bar in the middle of a conversation with some work buddies, in which he’s the only one to defend a female colleague of theirs. One of Cassie’s later marks waxes on and on about “why do women wear so much makeup when they’re so beautiful already?”, ugh.
Then there’s Ryan, king of the Nice Guys in this film. He’s presented, not as a predator, but as someone genuinely interested in a relationship with Cassie, an old college acquaintance to runs into her at the coffee shop where she works and starts flirting. Ryan hits every note in the Hopeless Rom-Com Romantic playbook – he’s bound and determined to get her to give him a shot, he has a self-deprecating sense of humor, he’s a cute pediatrician, and he’s funny and charming with her friends and family. But many of the same beats that position him as a rom-com lead are also the red flags that will eventualy lead to the reveal of his true colors near the end. First and foremost, the “tenacious” rom-com lead who “doesn’t give up” is actually a pushy guy who doesn’t take it seriously when a woman conveys that she’s not interested. He repeatedly hits on Cassie at her place of work, using wear-her-down tactics to get her to agree to a date. And when they’re on a leisurely stroll and just so happen to walk right by his apartment, Cassie instantly recognizes it as a warning sign, but she lets him talk her out of her valid concerns born of experience.
Finally, I want to touch on the ending, when Cassie finally sets her trap for Al, the man who raped her best friend in med school and was the impetus for her suicide. She poses as the stripper at Al’s bachelor party, gets him alone, handcuffs him to the bed, and then reveals who she is/what she knows about him. As she goes to extract her revenge, he overpowers her, strangling her to death. In the moment, watching it onscreen, I immediately went, “…Oh.” This isn’t how you want to see it go down. And even as the film goes on to show the contingencies Cassie put in place before leaving for the party, recognizing the possibility that she wouldn’t make it out alive and taking steps to ensure that Al would go down for her murder should the worst befall her, I kept wishing for some kind of “not really dead!” twist. It was unsatisfying, a gut punch.
And yet, I get why the film did it that way, from both a larger-world and in-story perspective. There’s the notion of turning the revenge fantasy on its head, the way that a real-life version of this story probably wouldn’t get the dark-but-triumphant ending that they usually do in movies. And just in looking at Cassie herself, there couldn’t be a happy ending for her. In my review, I referenced Sweeney Todd, because that’s what came to mind as the film drew to a close. Whatever life Cassie had before Nina’s rape and suicide, whatever life she may have put back together for herself afterward, had been consumed by her grievance and her obsession with revenge. Even if her plan went off without a hitch and she forever branded Al a rapist without being killed for her efforts, what then? I can’t believe that even this would’ve made her happy, that she would’ve been able to “move on” after that. It’s not exactly that she went into that party wanting to die, more that she just didn’t care. She didn’t value her life – work, relationships, goals, nothing mattered except her vengeance. And there’s no way to come out of that. So, even as I wish the ending could’ve been different (although I don’t know what I actually would’ve wanted it to look like,) I acknowledge the choices the film made and respect it for them.
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