Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

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Brian C
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Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#1 Post by Brian C » Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:21 am

Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell)

I've always been a fan of Carey Mulligan. She brings a sensitivity to her roles that really sets her apart from other actors, and as a result - whether by her choice or because of typecasting or maybe a bit of both - she tends to drift towards portrayals of either quieter types or period roles. Which is fine, as far as it goes, but I've always felt like she had another gear that wasn't really being fully tapped - a great actor that still hadn't quite gotten that One Great Role in a movie all her own.

So it's a particular joy to watch her in this film, where that great emotional sensitivity is put to use in the service of a character who's hyper-aware of the emotional states of everyone around her. This is not a character like I've seen in movies before; the trailers make it look like a revenge story, but Cassie is a much more complicated character than that, with the huge benefit to having Mulligan play this character is the way that she gently shows how much her hostility and anger is taking a toll on her. I see that there's an internet controversy about a review suggesting that Margot Robbie would have been more suited for the role, but I can't imagine Robbie having the same impact. And I doubt that she would have brought the key insight that Cassie is not just a wronged innocent, which any actor could have done, but rather a genuinely good person.

Anyway, I enjoyed almost all of this movie a great deal, until
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Fennell's anger gets the better of her, and she decides to take it out on Cassie. I don't really know how else to describe the decision to martyr this character, except that she's willing to kill her off if it means bringing the bad guys down. Frankly, it seems like the kind of condescending thing a male filmmaker would do - kill off their female character and then celebrate the purifying effect of her death. It would have been one thing if it had been written to serve a "they always get away with it" narrative that led to the events of the film, but the way it's written makes that extremely far-fetched, and at any rate that's not even how it plays out. And it's weirdly written as a more-or-less explicit satire of Peter Berg's Very Bad Things, of all movies. It just seemed discordant and bizarre given the stakes.
But there's a lot to like here. If I had a say, Alison Brie would be the kind of supporting work that gets awards talk - she's dead-on brilliant in a couple of short scenes in a role that's both razor-sharp satire and affecting, albeit in its own repulsive way. I also really liked the perpetually underrated Clancy Brown's likable-but-enigmatic father, a really insightful performance in terms of figuring out what kind of dad Cassie would have.

And I like how Fennell, as writer-director, essentially structures this as a superhero movie - like, for instance, Batman, she leads a double life while fighting against villainy by night, and dealing with the complications that this causes her relationships by day. Like a superhero movie, the ins and outs of plausibility are not quite nailed down, even within the terms of its own universe, but still it works for me. And a lot of the film is wickedly, darkly funny even if the underlying tragedy feels very real.

Still, this movie belongs to Mulligan, who's just fantastic in every frame.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#2 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jan 07, 2021 12:00 am

Brian C wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:21 am
And I like how Fennell, as writer-director, essentially structures this as a superhero movie - like, for instance, Batman, she leads a double life while fighting against villainy by night, and dealing with the complications that this causes her relationships by day. Like a superhero movie, the ins and outs of plausibility are not quite nailed down, even within the terms of its own universe, but still it works for me. And a lot of the film is wickedly, darkly funny even if the underlying tragedy feels very real.
Yes, Promising Young Woman is without a doubt the angriest 'superhero' film I've ever seen. At first this seems to be taking Sorry to Bother You’s gonzo satire and mixing it in a bitter cocktail with deep compassion for Carey Mulligan’s psychosocial schema. The balance between some unapologetically exaggerated farce and authentic (probably verbatim) conversations in male-female interactions reveal implicit truths about the female experience (the "you’re beautiful without makeup" line was a sharp skewering of Nice Guys). However, the trauma is exhibited in pretty astute regressive developmental characteristics and the narrative goes down windy roads of solipsistic perspectives clashing and emotional bottoms that are so unbearably heavy without a leg of support. My comparison to the Boots Riley film is purely in attitude: Fennell tries to do so much, hits seemingly every idea and tone one could imagine on the subject(s) and pulls nearly all of them off successfully.

I like the Batman analogy
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where 'not being drunk' is the costume inspiring fear. The idea of inebriated women as the 'alter egos' men buy and seek out, allowing them to hold their position of power in a safe space from any challenge to their fragile egos coming from actual engagement, is pretty scathing, and depressing, to each gender respectively. I like that she essentially dons her costume every time she breaks from expectedly complacent feminine norms in both loud and soft ways, even in daylight. The nature of her trauma as vicarious trauma drawn from empathy resembles a Batman-esque ethos but rooted in our world, and Fennell even addresses the self-destructiveness and consequences of vigilantism.

The film is also a great depiction of what it’s like to cope with both the end of emerging adulthood when you’re not ready to transition, and the impotence to find catharsis for our pain in tangible actions. The drama comes from as many directions as the comedy’s eclecticism, which is so black, goofy, mean, and ironic. There is also a very disturbing truth coming out in Mulligan’s “experiments”, that people only become motivated, empathize, and spring into action when confronted with their own avenues to identify, or have personal stakes in raw experiences that cause a moral crisis (like Molina). This isn’t even criticized so much as plainly delivered for us to sit with, acknowledging the cognitive dissonance from ignorance with admittance and ferociously clawing outwardly at once.
I've also long felt that Mulligan is a phenomenal performer with a presence hadn't been tapped into in the right way for quite some time. She brought a groundedness to Drive that made the rest of the histrionics feel earned around her humble humanism as not a prize, but a pure soul whose dignity is divorced from all the happenings, an icon who doesn’t need to be exalted but who it’s a privilege for others to exalt.
Brian C wrote:
Mon Dec 28, 2020 12:21 am
Anyway, I enjoyed almost all of this movie a great deal, until
SpoilerShow
Fennell's anger gets the better of her, and she decides to take it out on Cassie. I don't really know how else to describe the decision to martyr this character, except that she's willing to kill her off if it means bringing the bad guys down. Frankly, it seems like the kind of condescending thing a male filmmaker would do - kill off their female character and then celebrate the purifying effect of her death. It would have been one thing if it had been written to serve a "they always get away with it" narrative that led to the events of the film, but the way it's written makes that extremely far-fetched, and at any rate that's not even how it plays out. And it's weirdly written as a more-or-less explicit satire of Peter Berg's Very Bad Things, of all movies. It just seemed discordant and bizarre given the stakes.
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I also thought of Very Bad Things, and holy shit, this destroyed me. I can't concoct any rational arguments against your points, and the martyr celebration really bothered me too in a way that I think is incredibly harmful (like 13 Reasons Why's controversy around glorifying suicide, which I see this as a form of). Still, the shocking event brought to a head several incongruous ideas that highlighted the hopelessness of Cassie finding harmony against a cruel patriarchal world: the inevitable consequences of her self-destructive behaviors, the self-preservation of toxic masculinity through buried morality (even when there's a murder victim in your face to cover up), and the tragedy that the only way for Mulligan to find her catharsis was in death, a state she couldn't reach in life because a) the sociological forces beyond her control wouldn't allow it, and b) she wouldn't allow it. She felt broken beyond repair, had all the signs of being suicidal, and was looking for an endpoint that didn't exist- nothing could bring her friend back and she was unable to accept 'life on life's terms' and move on- which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but also not to be championed unequivocally.

A better film would have more clearly weighed this as both a strength and a fault- a strength because to ignore such ubiquitous evidence of rape culture would be a form of complacency, and a fault because her self-destructiveness took hostages in her parents, Laverne Cox, all the people who would be lucky enough to know her, and drove a stake between Cassie and her self. I do think this was handled well overall, and for the most part Fennell examined the enigmatic 'line' between action and passivity from a neutral distance, begging the question: Doesn't everyone live with cognitive dissonance, ignores their moral compass sometimes, compromises themselves ethically, and flexes morality consciously to their own selfish gains? Bo Burnham's statement that everyone has a skeleton in their closet, has made mistakes, etc. isn't wrong, but instead of resting in this grey space where he's both responsible and capable of rehabilitation, not deserving of forgiveness but capable of being forgiven if Cassie felt like it- putting the onus partly on her, he makes the situation about him and Fennell turns himself into a two-dimensional bad guy. It's a rather cruel "revelation" because there was an opportunity for Cassie to be held accountable for where she draws her 'line' without being shamed. No guy is perfect but instead of a "also" it's left as a negative reframe to All Guys Are Evil, which I suppose dilutes complexity in step with Cassie's mental state, but it takes a position of weighing morality in absolute terms in an objective manner as a diagnosis, which is the part that doesn't fit with the diversity of perspective on these issues we've been allotted thus far.

The notion that only the Cassies of the world, who live on a one-note death wish as Superheroes without having a life of their own, can live a life devoid of cognitive dissonance because they indulge in nothing that would force compromise, is a cynical view and one that Fennell admirably tells- but to celebrate it... I guess I'd like to think that Fennell is giving Cassie her martyrdom because, since Cassies don't exist in prevalence, she is noticing the part of many women- and some men- that want to take more action and live their lives in social consciousness but don't; that perhaps if we all took more action this hopelessness black hole wouldn't be there to suck Cassie up, and Cassies wouldn't need to exist in such a purified tragic form. I guess I'll choose to read between the lines on this one, because I don't believe Fennell intentionally undoes all her grey posturing throughout the film to arrive at a clearcut conclusion, even if it seems a bit diluted in the final moments. But I think the narrative shift where we had to sit in that bedroom with her body for what felt like ten minutes was a point made beyond martyrdom- that even absent of blame, the state of western culture's staticity is fucking devastating.
All of <that> considered, one of the best movies of last year, and certainly one of the most audacious.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#3 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:38 pm

There's no Promising Young Woman thread, but for those who have seen the film, this Variety article about Carey Mulligan's response to Variety's apology about their ironic critique of her casting is a worthwhile read

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Re: The Films of 2020

#4 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:38 pm
There's no Promising Young Woman thread, but for those who have seen the film, this Variety article about Carey Mulligan's response to Variety's apology about their ironic critique of her casting is a worthwhile read
And then, if you like your discourse extra vertiginous, WaPo responded to Variety's response to Mulligan's response to Variety.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#5 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:41 pm

TheKieslowskiHaze wrote:
Thu Jan 28, 2021 11:26 pm
therewillbeblus wrote:
Wed Jan 27, 2021 2:38 pm
There's no Promising Young Woman thread, but for those who have seen the film, this Variety article about Carey Mulligan's response to Variety's apology about their ironic critique of her casting is a worthwhile read
And then, if you like your discourse extra vertiginous, WaPo responded to Variety's response to Mulligan's response to Variety.
What a stupid article. Not that I disagree that things were blown out of proportion relative to the initial quote- but this writer's points are all over the map, and if she thinks that the Variety critic misread the film, hoo boy I wonder what film this critic saw. Honestly the original comment didn't seem to be as connotative as the media's made it out to be, but it was an off-the-cuff comment that had no purpose, and attaching the attractiveness of an actress to a believable seductress runs completely counter to the film's hypothesis that men aren't attracted to beauty as much as women they can wield power over in all forms. Both critics, this one even moreso, seem to be doubling down on that thesis by missing the point.

Plus she spoils the film so don't read the article if you haven't seen it.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#6 Post by Luke M » Wed Mar 17, 2021 11:46 pm

Promising Young Woman

For a movie that borrows it's title from the Brock Turner case, where the law failed Chanel Miller, it's an interesting choice to depend on the law for "justice." A rape revenge movie without the revenge. The whole point of those movies is you can't depend on the law and must take matters into your hands. But alas our protagonist puts herself in danger to umm teach the guys a lesson? Constant gotcha moments that are just pulled punches. Including the ending
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That's another gotcha moment, where you're supposed to feel good after seeing a winky-face emoji. Oh yeah, that scene includes a dated 90s-era inspired montage scene where the police arrest the villain who has a better-than-not chance of serving no time.
Truly awful movie.

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Re: The Films of 2020

#7 Post by therewillbeblus » Thu Mar 18, 2021 12:05 am

I think you’re missing the point of the narrative if that’s all you got out of it: This is a film about a woman who must choose between engaging in social justice or neglecting her ethos, and due to her trauma history is forced into a lose-lose predicament that poisons her life. She’s both unlocking herself from a socially-conditioned passivity to ‘choose’ and also not really left with any choice or power at all.
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That she seeks revenge in a manner that’s not full-throated satire only aids the psychological complexity and inherent tragedy in her fatalistic existence. We are granted privileged access to what it might be like to be stuck in a position of such torment triggered by incontestable oppressive culture and not able to get out of our own way to lead a happy life through necessary ignorance. She’s ultimately powerless and caught between her own conflicting morals- so yes, she doesn’t descend into a cartoon or one-note male ultraviolent hero (do we really need another movie where women must succumb to male aggression and lose their identities in order to achieve success?), and I’d reframe your criticism of “pulled punches” as the point of the film: pulled punches are the devastating fate of a female vigilante, which says as much about her strengths in empathic restraint as it does the cynical take on American justice for marginalized genders.

Though another key critique is that men are so fragile that Mulligan’s weapon of just soberly staring back at them forces them to sit with their fucked up behavior. I love the credits scene with the construction workers and how, when they’re not empowered through ignorance, they can’t handle it.
I agree the ending is contentious, but for far more complicated, unsettling reasons
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that imply the lengths women need to go to achieve justice may be morally problematic through self-destructiveness, even in a faux-progressive climate- which is the bold uncomfortable point of it all. Nice Guys are just as bad, and liberal dudes are still feeding into patriarchal-driven trauma, even if less directly, and certainly with the excuse to convince themselves they’re part of the solution. Her final action is a problematic one of martyrdom, but is this a cry out as the only method to authentically fight the system in our current climate while retaining some semblance of femininity and morality? Is the sacrificial act more in step with feminine sacrifice, while a more violent vengeance would be as (likely championed) male animalism? And what does this say about gender roles- learned or natural, accepted or challenged or surrendered to?
It's a messy film to be sure, but it's asking us to question some ideas very deeply without the clean-cut answers the kind of film you were clearly expecting does, and thus deserves more thematic and tonal credit, even if you don’t like it.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#8 Post by therewillbeblus » Fri Mar 19, 2021 10:57 pm

Goldderby Interview with Fennell about Promising Young Woman, including the ending, which really hits on my points above about the need to do something different than the typical film people expect. The interview intentionally dances around specifics so not really a spoiler technically, but I still recommend people go into this film as blind as possible

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#9 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Mar 20, 2021 12:20 pm

Here’s another, better interview with Fennell and Mulligan from The Guardian I particularly like how Fennell clarifies what kind of film she’s not making, Cassie's secret aim to actualize forgiveness and the necessary admittance in order for that to be possible, and how certain genres like horror can be recontextualized to our own vulnerable common experiences!

I also liked this bit:
Emerald Fennell wrote:I felt a responsibility to make a revenge movie that was honest about what revenge looks like for women, what violence looks like and how sisyphean the world often feels. If there’s a happy ending, I think it is that maybe the next time somebody sees a drunk girl in a nightclub, they might think twice about it.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#10 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat Mar 20, 2021 6:48 pm

I watched this again last night and find myself coming away more and more impressed by how funny and emotionally draining this film is. It's part dark comedy, part unnerving survival pic -where the lead isn’t physically alone but might as well be when other people are blinding themselves complacently to the horrors she cannot ignore, which itself impacts her ability to survive in our world at all. In some ways this film is reminiscent of Get Out, as a genre-bending movie going the superhero route rather than horror and still coming out more horrifying because of its willingness to stew in uncomfortable questions without the smooth catharsis of Peele’s digestible crowdpleaser (plus this does actually utilize horror tropes, so there’s that too). And that's not to say that this film doesn't have catharsis- but it goes down with a prickly bite and an even more repulsive aftertaste- an effect not dissimilar to how Mulligan simply staring down a man or surprising him with sobriety to what he's doing can be enough to destroy him.

Even vigilantism cannot escape the realism of consequence, or morality binding us to our limitations, sobering us to an impotence that is ironically tragic in its default to empathy. Cassie’s realistic humanity cannot actualize the necessary sociopathy-of-the-movies to fulfill a fantastical liberation- and that this is a fantasy is equally tragic. This film takes place in an exaggerated world, but just barely- and one that might mirror the subjectively skewed experience of a woman like Cassie. The necessary cognitive dissonance we need to be happy is a state she cannot attain, and this brokenness from trauma is as devastating as the notion that in order to completely embrace an ethos of uncompromised social justice we need to be self-destructively unbalanced to the point of no return. Fennell dares to make us question whether social justice in current western climates is so unsupported that self-empowerment is suicidal, making even the darker Batman narratives seem light in comparison to this too-real version of those themes.

I like what I've been reading from Fennell lately about how she is actively trying not to be didactic here, which helps the film remain ambiguous during scenes in the last act that appear at first glance to be taking an "if you ever did anything bad, you're evil/cancelable" position. Reframing these moments to show just how warped Cassie is, how irreversible this damage is for someone to live in an "you're all good or all bad" world of unrealistic expectations and needs from others; and simultaneously provoking us to see how important these challenges are to make, to force one to take responsibility, to be cognizant of our role in this system, our own problematic actions we neglect from consciousness, and holding onto those thoughts long past the credits- without any opportunity for an easy 'out' to re-engage in suppression. Cassie doesn't get one, why should we?

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#11 Post by swo17 » Sun Mar 21, 2021 3:24 am

Plot question:
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Just before deciding to delete her Frender account and move on, Cassie sees a post about the bachelor party happening "tonight" or "this weekend"--in any case, imminently. She then has what seem to be weeks of a relationship with Ryan before it goes south and she asks for the location of the bachelor party. This feels like a continuity error to me. Did I miss something?

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#12 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Mar 21, 2021 12:21 pm

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It's an Event Invite without any date mentioned and simply says, "Bachelor Parrrty: Al Monroe's Last Night As A Free Man!!!" and has comments like "Top secret location bitches!" and "The shark is comin to town" from someone named Sharky. There's no mention of a date, but it's not uncommon for Facebook 'Events' like these to be made well in advance of any event. It's definitely not a continuity error.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#13 Post by swo17 » Sun Mar 21, 2021 1:32 pm

Weird. Both me and my viewing partner thought we saw a date mentioned but I guess we just imagined it

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#14 Post by therewillbeblus » Sun Mar 21, 2021 3:12 pm

Yeah I went back and froze the frame in order to check for you- no mention. What did you think of the movie?

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Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#15 Post by TMDaines » Mon Mar 22, 2021 6:08 pm

Watched this tonight. Enjoyed it for the most part. Not sure any film could be more 2020/21 zeitgeisty than this one, given recent events in the UK.

Interestingly my wife, less than 30 minutes into the film, started remarking, and couldn’t get over, how she felt Carey Mulligan was being seriously miscast. She was completely unaware of the hoo-ha of the Variety article until I brought it up.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#16 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 8:04 pm

I'm curious what it is about Mulligan that feels miscast- or perhaps a fairer question is: what kind of character do people think Cassie is? A crucial point of the movie is that Cassie can be anyone, and so there is no right or wrong choice of an actress to play her unless their performance can't cover the range of psychological complexity necessary for the part. While another film might lead us to believe that Cassie always harnessed these traits, the narrative makes it clear that Cassie was a different person before what happened happened, and part of the tragedy and interest of the film is to reflect on that. The scene with Molly Shannon felt a bit cheap until I began wondering about their relationship- how long has Cassie been doing this and is Shannon's scorn sourced in vicarious trauma of witnessing Cassie's devolution, stemming back to past disclosures about her vow and the process of acclimating into this role and losing pieces of herself over time? That scene is loaded with history we aren't privy to, but Shannon seems to have been included in the knowledge of her double life- probably the only person she's been able to share that with. Her depleted, harsh, yet secretly compassionate response prompts us to realize that Cassie did not get to be this way overnight, and reminds us of the tragedy of surrender she's descended into, and what effect that's had on those who care about her.

So a core idea of the film is that she doesn't need to be a specific type of personality to undergo the transformation triggered by brokenness into empowerment, in all the right and wrong ways that she does. For my money, Mulligan portrays all these shades of this character with honest balance: sassy contempt, empathic sensitivity, determination and hopelessness intertwined, a sliver of innocence and desire to forgive under the shell of a female Lee Chandler, suicidally coasting through this life as a zombie outside of her obstinately singleminded missions.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#17 Post by swo17 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:50 pm

All the part calls for is "can play drunk" and reasonably attractive but "not that hot." Mulligan's perfect. But also, as she says, this is the last movie to be having this conversation about

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#18 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 9:58 pm

That's one way to answer the question of what you thought of the movie

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#19 Post by swo17 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:08 pm

I thought it was deviously clever, well written, and thought-provoking without being didactic. Also a masterclass in withholding information, whether to later reveal or to leave simmering in the mind.
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What happened to Adam Brody's character???

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#20 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:25 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:08 pm
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What happened to Adam Brody's character???
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It's funny to muse on this being the one man she really did kill, even though it's clearly establishing genre to reveal with the next target that her greatest weapon isn't masculine vigilante violence but soberly staring down vulnerable men into sitting with their own cognitive dissonance. Also, every time I watch Mulligan's face as she snaps into sober-Cassie and stares Brody down from her elevated position, she looks like a completely different actress. I thought it was a horror-homaging switcheroo at first but it's just a testament to Mulligan's transformative skills- the physicality and vocal shifts are unlike anything she's ever done. Honestly, I think it's the eeriest part of the film.

I love the inspired casting: from Adam Brody and Christopher Mintz-Plasse as the Nice Guys, to the Veronica Mars good boys Chris Lowell and Max Greenfield!

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#21 Post by swo17 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 10:39 pm

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Also, what do the blue and red hash marks mean in her notebook? Are the red marks men she killed, or is it something less sinister? We do learn later on that her revenge against Alison Brie and Connie Britton's characters was apparently nowhere near as twisted as we might have initially imagined. And yet, what was the hired muscle going to do to the lawyer if he hadn't been so penitent?

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#22 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:03 pm

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I took it to be not much more than another incarnation of the multicolored aesthetics (her manicure, her candy-colored hair as Candi, etc.), a default to art resembling pop culture that Cassie retains despite her deviation from our world, but that's an interesting observation. I just went back to look and both Brody and Mintz-Plasse earn black marks, while there are also blue and red pretty evenly distributed, so if black = an intervention of "I scared them without violence" that leaves two other colors. There's also the possibility that the colors signal how many times the guy attempted to engage sexually after being told No, etc. with other colors resembling less intense (or more intense..) reactions.

I never expected the revenge on Brie to be anything but a ruse because Mulligan never communicated to me that she was beyond her moral pulse (regardless of her self-destructive suicide in the end, I think part of the tragedy is that her morality stops her from ever fully achieving catharsis), but my friend I showed it to on my second viewing definitely felt the relief once she cleared that up. For the lawyer, well, I definitely think that indicates Cassie's less predictable, more unhinged side- like the tire-iron scene- though at this point in her narrative it seemed like she was honing in on those more responsible and upping her game as she closed the circle. There's definitely an internal logic to scaring random Nice Guys at the bars, to more cruelly staging nightmares for indirect and direct bystanders of her trauma, to hiring a goon to physically attack the lawyer that actively worked to gaslight Nina's story, shame her, and trigger her likely-suicide, to Cassie's own suicide-by-murder revenge on the culprit himself.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#23 Post by swo17 » Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:20 pm

I thought I remembered Brody getting red and CMP blue but that could just be another detail I got wrong. Also my baseline for this sort of thing is that season of The Americans where
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Keri Russell tricks her friend's husband into believing that they had an affair, which drives him to suicide
so comparatively speaking, this film is actually rather tame!

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#24 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Mar 22, 2021 11:39 pm

Haha yeah, the idea that the greatest weapon is forcing men to confront their own narcissistic hypocrisies, and simultaneously confront that they're so feeble that they can't handle this confrontation, is enough to validate my view that psychosocial vulnerabilities are western men's Achilles heels

On a lighter note, I don't recall the last time I laughed as hard as this exchange:
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"I hear you're a doctor, your parents must be very very proud."
"Not really, they wanted me to be a DJ"

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pianocrash
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 11:02 am
Location: Over & Out

Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#25 Post by pianocrash » Tue Apr 13, 2021 4:34 pm

I passed the time with this one, but by the end the strings broke and the premise fell apart, as others have pointed out. The implausibility of the bait & switch club tactics that Cassie used to give stern talking-to's to otherwise oblivious men felt much the same: a great idea, but nobody is learning or growing from their mistakes, especially in the manner of making people accountable for their actions (not to mention that even the dimmest bulbs would get wise sooner than six or seven pages worth of pen marks in any town on earth, even if she was a master of disguise). On the other hand, characters like Molina & Brie felt nearly whole in their guilt, and the sympathy you felt toward them was oodles more than you eventually feel for Cassie (as well as whatever her "plight" ended up becoming, amounting to little more than Fennell's shiny, toothless puppetry). And much of that is the ability to endure the suffering of consequences when there are actual stakes involved (and Cassie is careful to tow the line of what is and is not illegal re: her intended marks, which is why those tactics seem so meaningless). And in a less contrived situation, those consequences would be more understood, which is why, for instance, that road rage scene is positively ridiculous when the goal seemed to be just the opposite. And then the ending?
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It made the rest of the film seem like every new event was a threat of suicide wherein becoming a martyr was always the end result, because that's just what Cassie was always supposed to be.

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