FROM TOP: FOCUS FEATURES; MERIE WEISMILLER WALLACE/FOCUS FEATURES90 | Rolling Stone | April 2020
PETER TRAVERS
REVENGE, SERVED RED-HOT
In this slashing, blackly comic satire, Carey Mulligan
gives male predators a taste of their own toxic medicinea med-school dropout who’s
about to turn 30. Her hobby
is going to clubs, pretending
to be blackout drunk, and
waiting for someone to take
her home. That’s when she
issues a scary wake-up call
no would-be date rapist could
possibly forget. If you need
a primer on the meaning of
consent, Cassie is more than
happy to oblige. As played by
Carey Mulligan, brilliant in
movies from An Education to
Wildlife, this avenging angel
means business. She is defi-
nitely not someone you want
to fuck with.
Welcome to one
lit-fuse bundle of
revenge-movie dy-
namite, courtesy
of its thrillingly
talented creator,
Emerald Fennell.
Remember
the name. ThisBritish triple threat is 34, and
her résumé includes writing
clever YA books (Monsters,
Shiverton Hall), acting (she’s
the young Camilla Parker
Bowles on The Crown), and
taking over for Fleabag’s
Phoebe Waller-Bridge as
showrunner/head writer on
the second season of Killing
Eve (which earned her two
Emmy nominations). She
shook up Sundance in 2018
with Careful How You Go,
a wicked short film aboutvengeful women (Waller-
Bridge played one of them).
Not coincidentally, Cassie
happens to be reading a book
with that very same title — a
nice callback that doubles as
a warning of things to come.
Astonishingly, Promis-
ing Young Woman marks
Fennell’s feature debut as a
writer and a director. She sets
her tantalizing provocation
in the here and now of Amer-
ican suburbia and wraps it
in a candy-colored package
(Benjamin Kračun’s cinema-
tography is pure sugar) that
suggests she’ll go easy on us.
Don’t be fooled. The result is
a bonbon spiked with wit
and malice. “Hey, what
are you doing?” Cassie
snaps when numerous
dudes (played by Adam
Brody, Chris Lowell,
and a priceless Chris-
topher Mintz-Plasse)Promising
Young Woman
STARRING
Carey Mulligan,
Bo Burnham, Alison Brie,
Laverne Cox, Christopher
Mintz-Plasse, Adam Brody
DIRECTED BY
Emerald Fennell
$I
N A PRICKLY early scene
of Promising Young
Woman, a diabolically
funny, dead-serious take-
down of toxic masculinity,
an alleged nice guy tells a
trashed young woman he’s
brought back to his apart-
ment that they’ve made a real
connection. She practically
laughs in his face; he’s been
too busy trying to get her into
bed to learn a thing about
her. So let’s fill him, and you,
in: She’s Cassandra Thomas,FAIR WARNING
Mulligan reads
Careful How You Go.respectively realize she’s not
really out of it when they
snake a hand up her skirt or
try to take advantage of her
“inebriated” state.
What exactly is Cassie
doing? There’s no way this
review is going to give away
Fennell’s endgame, except to
say that the driving incident
happened to a med-school
friend that Cassie treated
like a sister. And it’s not just
men who feel Cassie’s wrath.
There’s Dean Walker (Connie
Britton), who caved to the
he-said-she-said excuses once
upon a time. And there’s
Madison (Alison Brie), a
fellow college student who
stayed mum in the face of
irrefutable evidence.
Though Mulligan is
Fennell’s perversely comic
partner in payback, to which
an instrumental of Britney
Spears’ “Toxic” adds just the
right bottom note, there’s
no question that Cassie is
flushing her own life down
the tubes. She lives with her
parents ( Jennifer Coolidge
and Clancy Brown) and
works at a coffeehouse, run
by a simpatico boss (Laverne
Cox), so she can cosplay as
a damsel in distress — her
lipstick-smeared face suggests
Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker with
a different spin on retaliation.
A bright spot enters Cas-
sie’s life in the person of Ryan
(Bo Burnham, killer good), a
former classmate who’s now
a pediatric surgeon. Their
reunion involves her spitting
in his coffee, a fab singalong
to Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are
Blind,” and the fact that his
height (about six feet six) will
make it look like he’s dating a
child. Burnham, famous as a
YouTube comic-musician and
for his exceptional directing
of Eighth Grade, pairs irresist-
ibly with Mulligan.
Is there hope for this cou-
ple? Have you met this anti-
heroine?! As the film moves
to a shocking climax, it takes
a big swing at the wolves who
tread through the #MeToo era
in nice-guy sheep’s clothing.
But, like Cassie, Fennell hits
hardest at the conspiracy of
silence around the predators.
Fennell wants us to laugh at
Promising Young Woman. She
also ensures those laughs
stick in our throats.Director
Fennell (left)
with Cox+++++Classic | ++++Excellent | +++Good | ++Fair | +Poor