Promising Young Woman – Film Review

By Ben (Discover English Teacher)

Warning: this post refers to sexual assault

Promising Young Woman is a new film, inspired in part by the #MeToo movement, which I discussed in a recent blog post. The #MeToo movement has shown how commonly women experience sexual harassment and assault. The movie is also inspired by other high-profile sexual assaults on women who were drunk at the time of their assaults.

In the film, the main character, Cassie, played by Carey Mulligan, is haunted by her past. Everyone described her as a promising young woman until a mysterious event caused her to drop out of medical school. Now she is getting older, working in a cafe and living at home with her parents, who are worried about her. At night and on weekends, she hangs around in seedy bars, pretending to be very drunk and waiting for a ‘nice guy’ to come and offer to ‘look after’ her. She wants to re-educate these predatory men, who are under the impression that it is okay to rape a woman who is drunk or unconscious. Unable to form relationships, unhappy and spending a lot of time on her own, she seems to be spiralling into depression.

Things improve for Cassie when she meets an old friend from university, Ryan, played by Bo Burnham, who asks her to go out with him. They start dating, but the past is unavoidably rushing back into their lives.

If you want to see an edgy thriller, with a really exciting conclusion, see Promising Young Woman, which is showing at many cinemas around Melbourne now.