Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#51 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:39 pm

Fennell has stated that Cassie actually does want to "forgive" deep-down, which reflects her complex persona and splitting we see in certain scenes, and why she forgives Molina who cannot forgive himself. She also can empathize with that pain, that no matter what anyone says or does, he will not be able to overcome that brokenness. Cassie's revenge is the necessary (as she sees it) justice that may corner someone into a position where they can experience powerlessness and shame and, once there hitting a destabilizing 'bottom', be more empathetic themselves to earn said forgiveness. Her methods reflect that cognitive dissonance's antidote is to puncture the "me and mine" ethos by infiltrating that selfish circle of intimacy, which is also saying a lot about how western civilization thinks/diffuses attention away from strangers and towards the self.

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mhofmann
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#52 Post by mhofmann » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:09 pm

brundlefly wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:25 pm
Oh, no, character who's basically in one scene is not a "fleshed-out person." You don't like the movie, and that's fine, but seem to be digging yourself the same hole as the person who wrote the substack in that you're determined to denounce every single element as utter failure.
I don't think I'm digging myself into any hole. Movies can fail completely due to one particular part or aspect, for example the wrong choice of ending. Which is one of the things that is happening here, even though that it not the only issue I have with the film.

Regarding the Molina part, I have no issue with the aspect of remorse and forgiveness per se, but with the clumsy way it is directed and shown: character is introduced -> ah yes, he's the evil cliche defense lawyer -> oh no, actually he's full of remorse -> tearful scene not even 2 minutes later, a cliche in itself. It's presented like a cheap trick and the message could have been conveyed so much more gracefully.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#53 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:21 pm

Speaking of clumsy, I appreciate you used the spoilerbox for part of your post on the previous page, but you missed a pretty big spoiler in the sentence before. I really don't want to police this since I'm not a mod, but if I came across that and hadn't seen the movie, I'd be pretty upset.

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Brian C
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#54 Post by Brian C » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:37 pm

mhofmann wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:09 pm
Movies can fail completely due to one particular part or aspect, for example the wrong choice of ending.
Putting this specific movie aside, this seems uncharitable. A movie can fail completely because of one particular aspect? There are plenty of movies that have endings I don't like but nonetheless I like other aspects of ... I don't understand the need to be so stringent. It seems like a strange attitude to have.
It's presented like a cheap trick and the message could have been conveyed so much more gracefully.
Graceful is a subjective matter, but what's the trick? Just upending audience expectations, or something else?

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#55 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:00 pm

Is the evil lawyer turning out to be remorseful a real cliche? I’m having trouble thinking of examples.

I kind of agree on some flaws ruining a whole movie. You might think of it as a crack in the wall vs a crack in the foundation. Some cracks can bring down a whole structure.

That said, he seems so angry with the film that he’s no longer distinguishing the two, and every flaw has taken on the same edifice tumbling scale.

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mhofmann
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#56 Post by mhofmann » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:00 pm

therewillbeblus wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:21 pm
Speaking of clumsy, I appreciate you used the spoilerbox for part of your post on the previous page, but you missed a pretty big spoiler in the sentence before. I really don't want to police this since I'm not a mod, but if I came across that and hadn't seen the movie, I'd be pretty upset.
Oops, fixed it. :) Thanks for catching this. I got it right the first time, then realized I had accidentally quoted my post. Got it wrong in the actual edit.
Brian C wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:37 pm
mhofmann wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:09 pm
Movies can fail completely due to one particular part or aspect, for example the wrong choice of ending.
Putting this specific movie aside, this seems uncharitable. A movie can fail completely because of one particular aspect? There are plenty of movies that have endings I don't like but nonetheless I like other aspects of ... I don't understand the need to be so stringent. It seems like a strange attitude to have.
I'm saying can, not has to. But yes, if a film ends on a note that I find enraging and a cheap cop-out, then that certainly will have an effect on how I perceive the rest of the film.
Brian C wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:37 pm
It's presented like a cheap trick and the message could have been conveyed so much more gracefully.
Graceful is a subjective matter, but what's the trick? Just upending audience expectations, or something else?
I just found that flip to "whining figure who regrets his actions in front of a complete stranger" utterly unbelievable. The Molina character, as so many others, is painted in the broadest strokes, which I think works to the film's detriment. As I already said, he's more a caricature or an archetype than anything else. I found myself more thinking of the filmmaker structuring the plot than caring about the character.

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Mr Sausage
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Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#57 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:11 pm

What did you find unbelievable about it? I had no trouble believing a guilt-ridden man would be compelled to confess his sins, especially one who had set himself a penance (making himself easily discoverable to those who he’d hurt) and was expecting the confrontation.

Also, types and broad strokes are efficient ways of communicating information. For a side character with only a brief scene, using them is appropriate. You’re setting a standard of characterization even Shakespeare wouldn’t pass. Plus, isn’t the movie a satire? Types and broad stokes are the stock in trade, right?

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mhofmann
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#58 Post by mhofmann » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:28 pm

Mr Sausage wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:11 pm
What did you find unbelievable about it? I had no trouble believing a guilt-ridden man would be compelled to confess his sins, especially one who had set himself a penance (making himself easily discoverable to those who he’d hurt) and was expecting the confrontation.

Also, types and broad strokes are efficient ways of communicating information. For a side character with only a brief scene, using them is appropriate. You’re setting a standard of characterization even Shakespeare wouldn’t pass. Plus, isn’t the movie a satire? Types and broad stokes are the stock in trade, right?
As mentioned in a post above, I don't have any issues with the fact that he regrets his actions or confesses his sins. There could have been a great character study hidden in there.
I guess it is the way this was directed and/or acted in the most binary fashion that rubs me the wrong way. If I don't think that this is a real person but "the guy in the plot who is forgiven, seconds after admitting his regrets", then something must be off. Sure, this was needed to set up the dishonest plot twist at the very ending, but it was just a too-convenient™ thing. The movie takes quite a few of these kinds of shortcuts instead of setting up proper characters.

Maybe I'd rate the film more highly with the Molina sub-plot cut out and the whole thing finishing a few minutes earlier before the last plot twist. Hard to tell now, really. Though I still think there are more things subtly off in the film that add up to an incoherent whole.

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brundlefly
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#59 Post by brundlefly » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:43 pm

mhofmann wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:09 pm
brundlefly wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:25 pm
Oh, no, character who's basically in one scene is not a "fleshed-out person." You don't like the movie, and that's fine, but seem to be digging yourself the same hole as the person who wrote the substack in that you're determined to denounce every single element as utter failure.
I don't think I'm digging myself into any hole. Movies can fail completely due to one particular part or aspect, for example the wrong choice of ending. Which is one of the things that is happening here, even though that it not the only issue I have with the film.

Regarding the Molina part, I have no issue with the aspect of remorse and forgiveness per se, but with the clumsy way it is directed and shown: character is introduced -> ah yes, he's the evil cliche defense lawyer -> oh no, actually he's full of remorse -> tearful scene not even 2 minutes later, a cliche in itself. It's presented like a cheap trick and the message could have been conveyed so much more gracefully.
Well, it's not what I said -- I said every single element, not one single scene -- because demanding this single-scene character (who's not even in the credits!) be fleshed out seemed a weird example to cite nevermind a hill to die on. I found the scene to have real emotional weight to it. A lot of that's the performances, and that you've got a great actor portraying someone who's been stewing in the guilt of what he's done. I agree that a lot of the people at whom Cassie fingerwags are cartoons that recite rote arguments -- but they're threatening cartoons that hold power. (I too like bottleofsmoke's comparison to Spike Lee.) Molina's character isn't the evil cliche defense lawyer, but that is the system and that was his job and he had a breakdown and has been repentant but has not repented. And he remembers Nina's name, which is important to Cassie. Both his desperate, honest regret and the shocked, unsatisfied way Cassie grants forgiveness without commiseration make it an interesting scene.

As I mentioned in my first post in the thread, I'm not even a fan of the film! The changes in tone don't vibe with me, I find Fennell's preference for (shallow? fickle?) pop escapism over catharsis frustrating. But it's an honest preference and an interesting frustration. Brian may be right that the marketing did damage, but I also think bait/switch is part of the method here. There are plenty of good and bad rape/revenge movies that go from A to B to C and plenty of good and bad portrayals of grief and trauma where everyone struggles and mopes from A to B to C. Promising Young Woman finds its own way through remembrance and defeat and it is more interesting for that.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#60 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:54 pm

mhofmann wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:28 pm
Mr Sausage wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:11 pm
What did you find unbelievable about it? I had no trouble believing a guilt-ridden man would be compelled to confess his sins, especially one who had set himself a penance (making himself easily discoverable to those who he’d hurt) and was expecting the confrontation.

Also, types and broad strokes are efficient ways of communicating information. For a side character with only a brief scene, using them is appropriate. You’re setting a standard of characterization even Shakespeare wouldn’t pass. Plus, isn’t the movie a satire? Types and broad stokes are the stock in trade, right?
As mentioned in a post above, I don't have any issues with the fact that he regrets his actions or confesses his sins. There could have been a great character study hidden in there.
I guess it is the way this was directed and/or acted in the most binary fashion that rubs me the wrong way. If I don't think that this is a real person but "the guy in the plot who is forgiven, seconds after admitting his regrets", then something must be off. Sure, this was needed to set up the dishonest plot twist at the very ending, but it was just a too-convenient™ thing. The movie takes quite a few of these kinds of shortcuts instead of setting up proper characters.

Maybe I'd rate the film more highly with the Molina sub-plot cut out and the whole thing finishing a few minutes earlier before the last plot twist. Hard to tell now, really. Though I still think there are more things subtly off in the film that add up to an incoherent whole.
It sounds like it was inconvenient to have it in there for you because it complicated the way you see Cassie and her mission as one-note. Molina's character was important because he demonstrated to Cassie that not all men/people within the system were beyond forgiveness, and as I already mentioned upthread, he provided an outlet in a broken person for Cassie to use as a mirror to empathize with, as someone who cannot forgive themselves. I don't think that's binary or unrealistic, but struck me as all too familiar characteristics from people who have been involved in vicarious trauma that I see in therapy on a daily basis. Regardless, this moment served a dual function in sobering Cassie to her own fatalistic inability to escape her mission by also reminding herself of her capacity for empathy and inherent compassion (which we get clues throughout that was Cassie's baseline before she herself morphed following the traumatic event, and buried these affectionate qualities as defense mechanisms to serve her self-destructive mission). I actually think it's the most important and affecting scene in the whole movie.

If the film is accused of failing to set up proper characters, I think we need to again view this as an exaggerated world seen through Cassie's subjective sense of distorted reality. Cassie keeps people at a distance, reflecting her isolation even amongst perceived allies like Molly Shannon, whose shockingly brief and unexpectedly estranging scene only reinforces this alienation of Cassie from her social environment. If we got fleshed out characters the film would keep us more at a distance from Cassie and undercut the tonal unease of her experience.

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Mr Sausage
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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#61 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:05 pm

mhofmann wrote:
Mr Sausage wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:11 pm
What did you find unbelievable about it? I had no trouble believing a guilt-ridden man would be compelled to confess his sins, especially one who had set himself a penance (making himself easily discoverable to those who he’d hurt) and was expecting the confrontation.

Also, types and broad strokes are efficient ways of communicating information. For a side character with only a brief scene, using them is appropriate. You’re setting a standard of characterization even Shakespeare wouldn’t pass. Plus, isn’t the movie a satire? Types and broad stokes are the stock in trade, right?
As mentioned in a post above, I don't have any issues with the fact that he regrets his actions or confesses his sins. There could have been a great character study hidden in there.
I guess it is the way this was directed and/or acted in the most binary fashion that rubs me the wrong way. If I don't think that this is a real person but "the guy in the plot who is forgiven, seconds after admitting his regrets", then something must be off. Sure, this was needed to set up the dishonest plot twist at the very ending, but it was just a too-convenientImage thing. The movie takes quite a few of these kinds of shortcuts instead of setting up proper characters.

Maybe I'd rate the film more highly with the Molina sub-plot cut out and the whole thing finishing a few minutes earlier before the last plot twist. Hard to tell now, really. Though I still think there are more things subtly off in the film that add up to an incoherent whole.
What would the Molina character need in order to be a proper character? And why does the speed of Cassie’s forgiveness bother you so much? Ought it to’ve taken a long time? Why? I thought the scene as played did a good job communicating Cassie’s reaction.

You aren’t doing much to explain how these things are bad. You just keep saying they are.

Not helping is that you seem to think the Molina scene is only there to set up a brief shot later, as if a scene having a causal use means it has no other use and is therefore empty. Your interpretations are quite cynical.

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Mr Sausage
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Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#62 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:35 pm

It’s also worth saying that the Molina, Britton, and Brie characters all have the same function in the movie: they represent aspects of the system. The lawyers who contrive unfairly to ruin victims; the administrators who protect promising young men by ignoring and dismissing victims; the colleagues who victim blame as a form of self protection. The interlocking parts of a system that protects the wrong people.

They are characters in themselves to various degrees, but they are also types standing in for larger ideas. They paint a portrait of a system. Their generality allows for Cassie’s dead friend to stand in for all victims within the system. But their specific emotional reactions, by implying a range of attitudes and opinions, good and bad, also stop the movie’s satire from becoming too abstract and totalizing. They are after all only people within the system, not the system itself, even if they are allowed to stand in for it. This for me is an example of characters being used complexly.

The final shot with Molina really has less to do with facilitating the ending than saying that one is not robbed of the capacity to be a good, helpful, valuable person by one’s bad actions. The movie does not trap Molina in a perpetual cycle of self torment. One of Cassie’s last actions is to offer him a way out of his private hell. It tells us less about the plot than about Cassie, that she had arrived at a position of generosity. It tells us too that the film also privileges personal responsibility—maybe at the expense of its systemic critique, but I’ll leave that for other people to dig into.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#63 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:53 pm

Great reading, Sausage. Also to your point about differentiating people within the system vs the system itself, that reminds me of Fennell's interview where she talked about the significance of mise en scene, using the production design in the room with Connie Britton as an example. She made sure that there were only pictures of old white men and American flags in every shot to signify that Britton is not the villain but that she's an ignorant participant within a deep-rooted patriarchal system that has perpetuated these macro-induced marginalizing habits that perpetuate injustices on the micro level.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#64 Post by Mr Sausage » Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:53 pm

Speaking of the forgiveness scene, it's important to understand that when she forgives Molina, yes, she is doing it for him--but she's also doing it for herself. It's the forgiveness you hear of parents giving the drunk driver who killed their child. It's a forgiveness so that healing can begin.

The movie builds to this carefully. When Cassie revenges herself on Alison Brie, it's satisfying. But when she does the same to Connie Britton, there isn't the same satisfaction. She's left so bitter and angry from the confrontation that she lashes out at some jerk on the road in an uncharacteristic act of violence. The violence could be cathartic, but the final shots make it feel dazed and empty, and her subsequent actions seem like a downward spiral of self destruction. This has consequences for her next revenge. The bitterness and anger built up in the previous encounter has been funneled into the next revenge: we don't know exactly what she'd planned, but unlike the mild trickery of the previous ones, there is an unpleasant and violent edge implied in the third. But Cassie is disarmed. At her angriest and most violent, confronting the least sympathetic and most culpable of the three figures, she's confronted in turn with the stark fact that this system that allows and covers for sexual assault has more victims than just those who were assaulted. She confronts a broken, horrified, unhappy man who has ruined his own life along with so many others, and now, as he unloads this burden of pain and remorse with surprising intensity, she's confronted with the starker fact that she had planned to unleash ugly, violent retribution on this man. And in that moment of clarity, she begins a process of healing: so that he can sleep, and so that she can move on. So that they can begin to escape a cycle of self-punishment. Her very next step is to visit her friend's mother and be told (not for the first time, I'm guessing) to move on. It's a more relaxed and meditative Cassie in that moment. And, indeed, she drops things and tries to restart her life.

The Alfred Molina confrontation is a vitally important one. More than the other three (Brie, Britton, mother) it represents a crisis point, after which things change. It's a recognition scene. It's a dramatic culmination. The movie needs it. And I love how it's shot, with Molina framed head on, staring intently and wild eyed at a point just below the camera.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#65 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue Apr 27, 2021 9:21 pm

Right, and that process of moving away from the surface-level catharsis sourced in projected anger, and into the area of forgiveness, is operating on an interesting anti-vigilantism plane of systematic desensitization, where the ideal state to relax herself to is not the typical mode of catharsis. It's easier (anger is in general the easiest emotion to default to when defending against the vulnerable core), yet problematic, and in the bits of information we get about who Cassie was before all of this, there's clearly a large part of her that doesn't want to be sensitized to antisocial behavior. So her progression is actually operating against the norm of these films- a part of Cassie is exposing her to these uncharacteristic and repelling actions in order to break herself down and find her younger 'self' again. It's subtle but it's there.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#66 Post by pianocrash » Thu Apr 29, 2021 4:46 pm

SpoilerShow
I can only guess Molina chose to leave his performance uncredited due to the significance of that character within the film, let alone his billing power (at least in my mind, wherein he is a giant big time actor), but who knows. Fennell mentions in the commentary that he only worked one day on the film, so I'm not sure how that works for the actor's union or w/e, and maybe he also was in prior commitments and snuck away from another job? Either way, it's a pivotal character/scene, and honestly I'm glad I wasn't privy before he popped up onscreen, as it remains the high point of the film (for as much as everyone else has already said, but also because I feel that he really built a whole world within the confines of that performance that never really gets any air in most depections of that profession, unless they've already spent an entire film trying to reach that point).

Likewise in the commentary, Fennell mentioned that the original ending would have stopped the movie right after Al & Schmidt burn Cassie's body, but that wasn't realized because the financial backers felt that would've been *too* bleak. I cannot recommend listening to this commentary if you are already not a fan of the film (I am not), since Fennell is practically smacking her lips by the end and quite pleased with how everything turned out. But at least it pointed me in the direction of where her head was at, and that her point of view is decidedly not what I value in a film, writer or director, as I've already mentioned previously. :-#

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#67 Post by thirtyframesasecond » Fri Apr 30, 2021 4:30 am

I watched this last night and really liked it - whilst I still process everything, there was one thing I noticed:
SpoilerShow
Does Christopher Mintz-Plasse's character, who I assume is what you'd call an 'incel' make a Jordan B Peterson reference? He says something about a lobster and I thought even referenced Jordan by name. The only reason it amused me was because the Mumford and Sons bassist is a big fan of his, when he's not supporting morons like Andy Ngo

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#68 Post by liam fennell » Fri Apr 30, 2021 8:42 am

Pretty sure it was a reference to the David Foster Wallace essay collection Consider the Lobster, which is appropriately cringe-worthy as far the character and his intentions in that scene goes. The book starts off with an exceptionally long essay about pornography in the 90s, and goes onto an equally lengthy and far more exhausting (also far more entertaining) essay about prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar in the form of a book review for a usage dictionary. DFW is a divisive author, to say the least.

I liked the movie a lot, too! Worthy of Fassbinder in a lot of ways, provocative and complex. Count me a member of the school of thought which considers this one of those movies where everything seems to function on a symbolic level and I think anyone who gets caught up on what Hitchcock called the plausibles is kind of missing the water for the waves. Do think the author wrote herself into the corner re the ending, but it works well enough if you consider it a representation of society at large's abhorrent behavior in regards to the subject in general.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#69 Post by TheKieslowskiHaze » Sat May 01, 2021 8:37 pm

Yeah, it's a David Foster Wallace reference, intended to paint its utterer as a pretentious "lit bro" type guy. Weirdly enough, it's the second movie of the year to use DFW in this way, the other being I'm Thinking of Ending Things.

It's also one of the reasons that's the worst scene in the movie. Just very on the nose, lazy, and dumb, along with his line about writing a book about "how hard it is to be a man these days." I don't hate the movie as a whole. Some of it works quite well. But that scene is bad. Just awful writing.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#70 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 01, 2021 9:15 pm

I feel like that criticism only works if the viewer assumes this is a mirror of our reality. Is that how people actually experienced this film? Do you think the two men at the end would arrive at the "You're a good guy!" rationalization in a manner of seconds like in the film vs. hours in real life, or can we accept that this is- as a whole- an exaggerated version of our world? Of course that scene, and plenty of others, are "on the nose" and these guys are fitting into lazy tropes, because they're filtered through the perspective of a woman who is paying attention to these loud repelling qualities and little (nothing?) else. It's like being transplanted into someone's point of view who has a heightened perception to all the bullshit we spew but never know it.

What I love about that scene is that it triggers a self-conscious blueprint for repentance and change, as there are several lines of dialogue I'm sure I've exhibited towards girlfriends in the past without self-awareness, and although none of them are cancel-worthy material or even immoral, they indicate a misjudged intention of compassion that's really an oblivious sense of egotism (i.e. "I never understood why women wear so much makeup. It's like, you guys are so much more beautiful without it. It's like, guys don't even like that kind of stuff, you know?"). Sure, it's a cocktail of all the Greatest Hits of toxic lines mashed together, but writing it off as unrealistic or overstated seems to miss the point with a condescending dismissal of what the scene is trying to get us to do: look within and reflect, rather than deflect and project our intellectual superiority over its writing. Such a stance keeps us at a distance from the qualities this female perspective is trying to vocalize, by silencing its voice. Isn't that precisely what the scene is critiquing?

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#71 Post by Cde. » Tue May 04, 2021 9:19 am

therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 9:15 pm
I feel like that criticism only works if the viewer assumes this is a mirror of our reality. Is that how people actually experienced this film? Do you think the two men at the end would arrive at the "You're a good guy!" rationalization in a manner of seconds like in the film vs. hours in real life, or can we accept that this is- as a whole- an exaggerated version of our world? Of course that scene, and plenty of others, are "on the nose" and these guys are fitting into lazy tropes, because they're filtered through the perspective of a woman who is paying attention to these loud repelling qualities and little (nothing?) else. It's like being transplanted into someone's point of view who has a heightened perception to all the bullshit we spew but never know it.
But does the film actually challenge her reducing of this man to a few loud repellant qualities, or does it just present a flattened character of a repellant man for us to hate, who does all the things all the blogs have written about what bad men do, like recommend DFW?
therewillbeblus wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 9:15 pm
Sure, it's a cocktail of all the Greatest Hits of toxic lines mashed together, but writing it off as unrealistic or overstated seems to miss the point with a condescending dismissal of what the scene is trying to get us to do: look within and reflect, rather than deflect and project our intellectual superiority over its writing. Such a stance keeps us at a distance from the qualities this female perspective is trying to vocalize, by silencing its voice. Isn't that precisely what the scene is critiquing?
Sounding dangerously close to calling it above criticism.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#72 Post by ianthemovie » Tue May 04, 2021 10:23 am

Haven't seen the film yet but I can't say that I'm encouraged by its perpetuating the idea that David Foster Wallace-fandom is somehow shorthand for toxic masculinity/rape culture/incel nonsense. Such associations have been circulating online for years now and are so divorced from any sort of real understanding of what Wallace's work is actually about (or his readership) that I can't help but roll my eyes at anyone who insists on rehashing them.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#73 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue May 04, 2021 10:42 am

Yes, I do believe the film challenges her doing this in its long game, demonstrating over time that she's her own worst enemy, her version of reality is tragically skewed and fatalistically problematic against giving people chances to be more complex than their repelling traits, that she would need to do in order to have some semblance of a life. The film just does this without condemning her absolutely for this failure, and doesn't dub her as right or wrong. Yet because I think the film is shot for a while through her perspective of the world, the archetypes of men are going to be louder and the reveal of her faults is subtler. I've already said this many, many times in this thread though.

I don't think it's above criticism, though I can see how my statement could be read that way. We literally get a snippet of a character, who is two-dimensional by design and cartoonish to fit Cassie's filter. If you read the film as not having that sheen of exaggerated subjectivity, or saw the jokes as lame, then yeah criticize it for being poorly written. But I interpreted the criticism as accusing the film of being "poorly written" because it's "on the nose, lazy, and dumb" when I believe it was intentionally written that way to reflect Cassie's psychology, and yes, I'm sensing from some people that they're defaulting to project reactively where the film struck a nerve rather than to sit with that discomfort. I think the film is placing us into this tough position by design, but can't we criticize what we didn't like about it while also perhaps questioning that we didn't like what we found because of a personal reason, rather than distancing ourselves from the content to objectively attacking the depiction we're triggered by?

I didn't take the DFW reference to be damning in itself, certainly not "what bad men do" in blanket terms... I love DFW, and most people I know who have read and like DFW are not Nice Guys, but are actually nice people. However, I appreciated how he was used to poke at those of us who may have inadvertently shown-off intellectualism without self-awareness. It's definitely something I've done (not as bombastically as this guy, but still) and have actively tried to be more conscious of this behavior over the last few years, but I do think that plenty of films critique types of characters and behaviors and that the reactions to this one seem to be pretty unbearable for some. To me this shows that it's reaching a population who might have been spared the lobs in mainstream media for a while (jocks have had their day, but avid readers who brag- god forbid) and may benefit from moving beyond defensiveness and looking at- not this depiction as a blanket truth- but the dulled-down traits that this film is exaggerating that we have a hard time facing.

I think where we disagree, and as other posters have mentioned and Fennell has outright stated, is that this film is decidedly not being didactic, about this or any issue. It's presenting things to make us reflect. So our reactions to remain aloof and chastise the presentation because they offended us is a mirror image of the examples in the film of men who have an acute sensitivity born from their dominant status and avoid the opportunity to engage with Cassie. Maybe it's not doing this effectively enough for you or others, and that's fine, but there's a difference between acknowledging that purpose and pointing out how and where it fails vs. assigning an objective stamp of laziness while interpreting the intentions of the film against what the filmmaker has already disclosed at length.

The specific latter points I’ve read appear more like a refusal to engage with the film, a ‘criticizing rapists is fine but how dare you attack qualities I might possess’ defense of exceptionalism. The film isn’t above criticism but I’ve read several points of criticism that are suspiciously guarded in their offensive tactics, and it’s worth pointing out that the film is targeting all of us to lower those shields for self-examination without calling all of us rapists or didactically professing we should be canceled by society.
Last edited by therewillbeblus on Tue May 04, 2021 10:57 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#74 Post by DarkImbecile » Tue May 04, 2021 10:49 am

Her stated intentions might be one thing, but they’re also beside the point if the film itself fails to deliver on those intentions, no?

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Re: Promising Young Woman (Emerald Fennell, 2020)

#75 Post by therewillbeblus » Tue May 04, 2021 11:06 am

Of course, but unless I’m missing something I have yet to respond critically a point that acknowledges this failure, or how this triggered the writer on a personal level of admission, as part of its defense. Since the film is asking us to be self-reflective to how our sensitivity might influence our reactivity, not doing so welcomes that challenge that there may be a self-imposed blind spot affecting the criticisms, especially when they’re lobbed objectively at a film demanding subjective engagement. That doesn’t mean the film is entirely successful and some people are totally missing its genius, so apologies if that’s how I’m coming across with my responses, but it does mean that it’s worth looking at why it’s so repelling to you personally, and if that’s too difficult maybe sitting with that in conjunction with criticizing the film.

I think it's worth pointing out that not every athlete or fraternity member is homophobic or aggressive and mean, but that hasn't stopped films from depicting members of these groups as such for a long time, and yet it seems like certain populations are 'off limits' to those offended by this scene. I have no idea how someone could determine a causality between the character in questioning reading DFW and being a toxic person any more than an athlete being homophobic because they belong to a sports team. The scene is there to show us that nobody is off limits, not to say that those of us who read DFW have a predisposition for sexual assault.

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