Promising Young Woman (2020)

I wanted to write this entry immediately after watching "Promising Young Woman", about a week ago, but unfortunately I didn't have enough time. Not that I have now... But probably if I postpone more I'll forget everything I had in mind. There's not much left anyway...

First of all, I avoided for a while to add the movie in my "to watch list" for two reasons: 1) I don't like Carey Mulligan (and I still believe that her act in "Drive" was a big minus for that movie, although after watching the current one my opinion on her acting skills changed dramatically) and 2) I'm fed up with movies carrying a tag related to some social issue, social movement, whatever, no matter what that might be, and I'm literally struggling lately to avoid productions that don't miss the chance to touch such issues. I'ts hard in such cases to make an objective comment that doesn't get twisted by the context. I said it before - when I watch a movie I want something to get me out of the "current real life", or if not, at least to get my attention for its cinematic value. For everything else there are news, documentaries, and other stuff. Fortunately, despite it's labeling in many reviews with a feminist bias - on which I won't comment, "Promising Young Woman" really has a cinematic value. And that's the main reason to watch it for.

The subject is a "revenge story". And as any "revenge story", since Monte Cristo or even older, it's catchy. Casey is a lonely young woman spending her days at a coffee counter, after dropping out of college years before and giving up to a medical carrer. The reason - an incident where the victim was a good friend, on which incident we don't get precise details in the movie (and that's a nuance we'll get back to). However, you can easily assume a rape during a party that went out of control. The result - the perpetrators getting away with it and the girl committing suicide. The trauma however moves forward, and we get to the present day, when the main nocturnal activity of Casey is playing a role of a vulnerable drunk bait, visiting the city's night clubs, up to the moment when somebody trying to take advantage out of her gets to far and is hit by the shock of dealing with a very lucid woman. Again, we don't get an explicit ending to some scenes like that (the same fine nuance), but you can easily assume that the revenge is soft, keeping it at the level of making the potential aggressors to consider carefully any future attempt like that. The context of the action becomes more complicated when Casey meets a former colleague. The way it complicates, you'll see in the movie...

As I said, I probably forgot most of what I wanted to write when this was fresh in my head. To finish the idea started above, the script is excellent as well as the directing - the fine nuance I mentioned is that throughout the whole movie you might get an uneasy feeling that some Tarantinoesque violence will burst out, but this doesn't happen. There is one exception, for which the contrast makes is very hard to watch (and probably that's the whole point), but despite you might expect, all the rest you'll see is a revenge story that's completely non-violent from start to finish, which stands out in the genre and actually makes it memorable. Carey Mulligan is perfect in her character, or better said she's way different from other bland acts I've seen her in - as I mentioned in the beginning, this completely changed my view on her acting skills. Technically, the movie scores on two accounts - editing, it's been a while since I watched something this good (true, there wasn't much to watch lately) and on soundtrack - I don't refer only to the score, but mostly to the songs/covers selection and the way these are used. There are movies (many by Tarantino, "Drive", "Baby Driver", "Atomic Blonde", "A Simple Favor", and other) where this parts counts at least as 10% of the final feeling. "Promising Young Woman" fits perfectly in the same list.

I'll end up with a spoiler (sort of). The ending here is probably comparable shock-wise with the one in "Uncut Gems" (the difference here being that it gives you a bit of time to digest it - because the story is not over). Unfortunately, as in "Uncut Gems", it's quite bitter - much more bitter actually. In some sense it turns the whole thing into an anti-revenge movie, because in the end you can see it like that. On the other hand an outcome of "let it go" would have cancelled the subject, and something more like "John Wick" style would have been totally unrealistic. I remember though that last year I wrote about "A Good Woman Is Hard to Find", so it's possible to have something in between, but I guess the actual intention is explicitly for an ending bitter enough to not forget it. And a criteria for a good movie, is that you'll remember it :) ...

Rating: 4.5 out of 5