Promising Young Woman

It’s quite contrived, especially the ending, but the curiosity is pinned at a pretty decent level and the story even manages to pleasantly surprise with the fate of the main characters. Carey Mulligan is good (though I couldn’t shake the feeling that she looks old compared to her peers) and, if we consider how close the premise was to uncontrolled feminist bollocks, everything holds convincingly together and without slipping into the realm of cheap parody. A good #metoo snack that won’t gratuitously piss-off the boys. :) 75% (15/01/2021)

If you've known the term "rape culture" for more than a year, you're not looking at the film through the spectacles of this fundamental issue, and thus you can see in all its nakedness how horribly written and filmed the whole thing is. Nowhere in the world do people talk to each other like this, the dialogue sounds like internet discussions read out loud or situations condensed from different articles. It's filmed like a sitcom, it's static (and often with insignificant poser symbolism), and in the faster sequences it's so badly edited that you can't tell exactly what happened. The film even has a reasonable musical structure, yet has no tempo, which I never would even have thought was technically achievable. And I've only seen a romance handled this poorly maybe in the film Obvious Child. Unfortunately, Promising Young Woman is exactly that case where a theme pushed from below gets into the hands of the middle class. It becomes a dull and silly hurrah farce that enjoys its untouchability and success under the wing of its subject. The whole issue of rape culture is thus relegated to a dumbed-down platitude, the trademark strong woman, and by continuing to be represented by similarly bad and calculated films it will retrospectively do a disservice to the whole fight against patriarchal society. Hashtag cinema at its worst. (01/06/2021)

I watched Promising Young Woman without watching the trailer or doing any further research about the film, and I was definitely surprised by the final product. The plot, involving a a crime for which the statute of limitations has expired, is nothing we haven't seen elsewhere before, and you figure out pretty soon what actually happened back then. But the film's engaging element is the ambiguous character of Cassie and her (slightly) sociopathic cat-and-mouse game, which has a justifiable reason. While there is a perceptible wink to the #metoo campaign, I found it non-violent and unobtrusive in its execution. So for just under two hours, to the soundtrack of (at times playfully adapted) familiar hits, I was swept along on a journey of revenge, the conclusion of which annoyed me to some extent but ultimately satisfied me. P.S. In the end I was reminded of The Life of David Gale. (18/04/2021)

One of the few #metoo films with a heroine who’s an interesting and complex character, whose actions can be viewed quite critically, but are still somehow understandable. Add to that Carey Mulligan’s impressive performance and you get something really fun to watch, even if some situations stink of screenwriting meddling. Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack and one of the most satisfactory endings in a long time. (05/01/2021)

Promising Young Woman is a revenge-flick product of the #metoo mindset in a pop package with a pleasing cast and more thorough characterisation of the protagonist than we are used to from thematically similar revenge-horror movies. Carey Mulligan is cute, but the mentions of “Oscar-worthy” acting are off base. Besides that, the film in no way goes beyond the creative boundaries of playful fluff, which is original only in its placement of the given theme in the A-list mainstreem. Conversely, the would-be screenwriting magic in the climax serves as confirmation of the film’s creative limits within the confines of a mere fresh teen drama. Plying the same waters, Assassination Nation was bolder and more stylish. (27/01/2021)