Movie Maker - USA (2020 - Spring)

30 MOVIEMAKER.COM

Years after their

first collaboration,

Emerald Fennell

and Carey Mulligan

are brilliantly

calling the shots

BY TIM MOLLOY

SPRING 2020

AREY MULLIGAN, star of the explosive

Promising Young Woman, first met the film’s

writer-director Emerald Fennell years ago,

in an episode of the British TV procedural

Trial and Retribution.

“Emerald played ‘Bitchy Girl in Nightclub,’”

recalls Mulligan, “and I played ‘Girl Who Gets

Murdered.’ We had a fight in the nightclub,

and then I get thrown down the stairs.”

She clarifies diplomatically: “Not by Emerald.”

They only remembered their earlier collaboration about

two weeks into shooting Promising Young Woman, which is

likely to be much more memorable. We spoke to them at the

Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered to an exhilarating

mix of shock and delight.

The film offers a provocative new take on “Girl in Night-

club”: It opens with Mulligan’s lead character seemingly

drunk and barely conscious in a club, while a pack of guys

watch her. One decides to take her home, and tries to have

sex with her despite her apparent vulnerability. And then

we learn she isn’t so vulnerable after all. That’s only the

beginning of a twisty, Hitchcockian story that is equal parts

dark comedy and thriller. You’ll leave the theater thinking

about consent, but also feeling knocked out by the witty

storytelling.

It’s also gorgeous. The color palette is filled with soft

pastels, and the music is ecstatically perfect. Charli XCX and

Britney Spears have shining moments, but the best musical

number takes place in a drug store, and features a forgotten

song by the last artist you’d expect.

It’s just the right amount of medicine, and the right

amount of sugar.

“Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it can’t

be beautiful, because life is a horrendous, beautiful night-

mare, isn’t it?” Fennell says. “I wanted it to be fun and a

C

HOW ‘GIRL IN NIGHTCLUB’

AND ‘GIRL WHO GETS

MURDERED’ MADE

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

popcorn movie that also turns the thumb-

screws on every single person watching it.

And I just want them to like it. I want it to

be kind of a horrible, beautiful experience.

Carey’s performance is the absolute linchpin

of that because it contains everything that

the film is.”

Fennell ran the second season of the

beloved BBC America thriller Killing Eve, and

plays Camilla Shand, the eventual Duchess

of Cornwall and wife of Prince Charles, on

Netflix’s The Crown. For all her TV success,

she also wanted to make sure her debut movie

felt like a true movie—“crafted and singular.”