Vengeful desires in Promising Young Woman

TW: Sexual assault

To set the tone for this one, press play on this rendition of Britney Spears' 'Toxic' from the soundtrack of Promising Young Woman. Take a minute to listen before continuing to read, or keep it playing as background noise while we delve into the plot.

The plot

I don't know about you, but that track makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. It's so perfectly eery and anxiety-inducing. An impeccable choice for a story of this nature. Emerald Fennel's Promising Young Woman is a revenge fantasy. Our opening scene introduces us to Cassandra, or Cassie, sitting on a long red leather couch in a bar. Barely conscious, clearly intoxicated. A group of men spots her and one of them walks over to ask if she's okay, and how she's planning on getting home. He apologizes for his friends yelling lewd comments at her. They're just assholes. He's a nice guy, though, don't worry. After a short, incoherent conversation, he tells her he'll call a cab and ride with her, only to later suggest she come up to his apartment with him for a drink. "My place is just a few blocks away. Come on, just one beer?"

He pours her a large glass of hard liquor. Before long she's laying on his bed, slurring confused statements asking him what he's doing. "Shhhh, don't worry. You're safe", he tells her as he slides off her underwear. The camera focuses on Cassie from the waist up, when she suddenly looks to the ceiling, nearly into the lens, then sits up abruptly. "Hey, I said: 'What are you doing?'" Her voice is clear and stern, her eyes locked to his as he looks at her, dumbfounded, from in between her legs.

This is a weekly occurrence for Cassie. Dress up, go to a club, act too drunk to stand, and wait for a nice guy to 'rescue' her as a ploy to take advantage of her. Then give them the fright of their lives in hopes they realize that they are not as nice as they make themselves out to be. Oh, and making sure to tell them that there are many women out there who run similar schemes. Some of them carry scissors, so be careful out there.

Cassie's desire for vengeance stems from something that happened to her best friend, Nina. During their time at medical school, Nina is raped at a party. The perpetrator, Al, receives not so much as a warning. Both Cassie and Nina drop out of college, essentially losing their opportunity at the future they had set out for themselves, and Cassie is consumed by rage over the injustice. Her schemes in clubs are just the beginning. There is more reckoning to be done, so she devises a plan.

Analysis

The camera work and styling of the film is, in my opinion, perfectly executed. It's Emerald Fennel's directory debut and it's clear she had a very specific vision, genre bending between something of a thriller, 90s rom-com, and horror, all in a candy-colored pastel world. Surrealist yet incredibly realistic. Cinematographer Benjamin Kracun, who also worked on Gone Girl, explains how he implemented the idea of the predatory camera, taking inspiration from wildlife documentaries. As we follow Cassie on her vengeful mission, the camera pulls in on her prey very slowly. Even creeping up on them at times. Subjects are often placed in the lower center of the frame. They appear small, looking up at Cassie as if asking her for mercy. As Cassie unravels in her anger and madness throughout the film, the camera work becomes less steady. Shots are longer and move with her hastily, meant to induce a sense of unease for the audience, exemplified especially in the scene where she - in a seemingly absent state - smashes the taillights and front window of a truck driver hurling insults at her.

Wardrobe also plays a significant role, alongside the camera work, in symbolizing Cassie's mental world. Most striking to me is that I am left wondering during the final credits who Cassie even is. She uses her clothing meticulously to keep up a front and to disguise herself. When meeting with an old friend, Madison, or with dean Walker of the medical school she and Nina attended, her style is classy and tailored. Pantsuits in a neutral color scheme. To give the appearance of maturity or power. At bars and in clubs, she wears tight dresses with heavy make-up. Trashy, some might say. Then in her day-to-day life working at a coffee shop or going on dates with her old classmate Ryan, she is adorned in pastel-colored dresses, wearing her hair in braids with bows. She seems lost and unable to connect with her identity, as if being completely consumed by what happened to Nina. During confrontations with her prey, she is confident and cocky. She looks the part and acts like it, too. But as we move through the plot, she starts to question her sense of self as well as her conviction.

Societal context

Let's talk about the title. Promising Young Woman. It is a play on victim blaming, or rather, perpetrator excusing, hinting at the often used argument that a rape conviction - nay, a rape allegation - ruins the perpetrator's prospects at a fulfilling life. The allegation will always hang over his head, follow him anywhere he goes. He's got such a bright future. He's a nice guy. Such a promising young man. Don't let one mistake, one moment of poor judgement define him for the rest of his days. Remember that infamous 2016 court case in the United States, People V. Turner? A Stanford student was indicted on five counts of various degrees of sexual assault, and convicted for three of them, after having unconsentual sex with an unconscious, intoxicated woman in an alley. The student said during the trial that he wanted to show people how "one night of drinking can ruin a life". His life, that is, mind you. And his father wrote a letter to the jury to protest the six-month prison sentence, saying it was a "steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life".

This film flips the perspective, ridiculing the collective concern for the assaulter and instead highlighting the lifelong impact of such an event as endured by the woman to whom it happened. Would she not have had a promising future? The woman who survived the abovementioned assault, Chanel Miller, detailed the lasting effects this event has had on her in her statement to the court after sentencing, directed at her assaulter. Her opening line? "You don't know me, but you've been inside me, and that's why we're here today." Such power. She goes on to recount the crippling fear, anger, and powerlessness she was left with for years after that night in the alley, emphasizing again and again how his "20 minutes of action" have altered her life in unimaginable ways. She says: "He is a lifetime sex registrant. That doesn’t expire. Just like what he did to me doesn’t expire, doesn’t just go away after a set number of years. It stays with me, it’s part of my identity, it has forever changed the way I carry myself, the way I live the rest of my life."

Miller's full statement can be found here.

We never see Nina in Promising Young Woman, besides a few childhood pictures of her and Cassie. I gather this is done to highlight that she could be anyone. In this story, Nina symbolizes all publicly unknown women who have experienced similar events, silenced and faceless. We also notably never see the assault. Most of Cassie's prey don't even remember the event occurring. Perhaps they've repressed it. Perhaps they were too drunk to recollect. Or perhaps, as she says to Ryan, it just didn't make that big of an impact.

The revenge quest we're witnessing highlights various aspects of rape culture. From Ryan and Madison being innocent bystanders, calling the event gossip, laughing uncomfortably on tape but doing nothing to stop it from happening. Dean Walker having to give Al the benefit of the doubt. He's such a great doctor now, after all, and she gets accusations like this all the time. Innocent until proven guilty, right? Should she have to ruin a young man's life over it? Al's former lawyer admitting to using anything he could find to paint victims as promiscuous beings, who would have obviously wanted this to happen. To two women, promising young women, having their futures crumble to pieces by the actions of a man.

I won't spoil the conclusion of the film, only that it involves a final act of revenge, but that it's not what you think. Cassie shows up at Al's bachelor's party disguised as a stripper in a nurse outfit. She ties him up to a bed and introduces herself as Nina. Nina Fisher. Fear creeps into his eyes when he realizes what is happening, and Cassie, quite literally embodying Nina in this scene, speaks the words I want to end on today.

"[Nina] dropped out. Top of her class and she dropped out. I did, too, to take care of her. The two of us, gone. You graduated magna cum laude, though. Did you ever feel guilty, or did you just feel relieved that she'd gone?"

"You know, I was affected by it, too, okay? I mean, it's every guy's worst nightmare getting accused like that!"

"Can you guess what every woman's worst nightmare is?"