Written by Thea Bishop-O’Connor

As we are presented with some male nightclubber goers’ crotches awkwardly dancing, Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (2020) starts with a Mulvey-Esque reversal of the gaze. We hope from the patriarchally-controversial opening that Fennell will attempt to continue to dismantle the male gaze and seek to provide a complex revenge film, that carefully explores sexual assault. Yet the film disappoints. Like liberal feminism, Fennell’s film is unable to be progressive due to its attempts to create liberation through cognizance. Women’s safety is certainly a contemporary profitable topic. Perhaps uncoincidentally the films production was fast-tracked during the #metoo era. The light hyper pop of Charli XCX accompanies the opening. The popular song (the music video contained many ‘heart-throb’ celebrities) ties the story to taking place in roughly the present. The soundtrack hints towards the male fantasies of the bodies attached to the grinding crotches, for women to be obsessed with ‘boys’ – as well as perhaps to playfully foreshadowing the themes of the film.

The revengeful and somewhat tragic protagonist Cassie (Carey Mulligan), who lacks friends, hobbies, (successful) romantic interests, parental approval, house, or non-violent personal ambitions – as far as we know – spends many of her nights faking intoxication to teach lessons to local ‘gentlemen’ and ‘nice-guys’ turned rapists. Cassie certainly proves to be dedicated to Nina Fisher’s revenge.

‘She’s asking for it’, ‘they put themselves in danger girls like that’, the generic businessmen throw these terrifying but routinely used accusations towards Cassie, who is beginning her routine as usual. Tonight, she is sprawled across a large leather red sofa, her head hanging down. One of the businessmen feigns chivalry in a routine so familiar to Cassie she seems to anticipate his every move. The paralleling intentions of both characters place them back in his apartment, sitting closely on the sofa. We are forced to feel uncomfortable when he leans and kisses Carrie without reciprocation, although both unphased. This threatening behaviour is worsened when it is contextualized by his ignorance of the fact his one-night stand may feel more comfortable if his roommate was home, as well as his decision to provide Cassie with a much larger drink than his own. A trick Cassies deploys herself at times. Fennell uses alternating point of view shots which frames the shocked assaulter with Cassie’s legs as she abruptly asserts her sobriety. As it cuts to Cassie proudly walking home, it seems up for debate whether Fennell hoped us to imagine whether her shirt is stained by her hotdog ketchup or blood. Cassie then goes to her childhood bedroom, where she aggressively opens her notebook to add to a lengthy tally. The next morning, having breakfast with her parents, Fennell here depicts an obvious vulnerability in Cassie. The loss of her best friend and repeated exposure to trauma seems to have holloed her and stunted her progression.

The film continues to play out obtusely through its repeated and escalating presentations of variations of the same routine shown in the opening scenes. Fennell escalates the stakes until Cassie is murdered by her best friend’s rapist. Disappointingly, this emphasizes an element of male fantasy and is not helpful nor hopeful for the 97 percent of sexual assault survivors- documented by UN Women UK. Cassie’s trauma remains unexplored in her death. The film fails to be empowering in its message when it expects audiences to take reassurance in the fact Nina and Cassie’s perpetrators have been arrested. Fennell’s celebration of police harshly underlines the out-of-touch politics of Promising. Profiting from the #metoo movement, Fennell’s work was a cash horse for FilmNation Entertainment and LuckyChap Entertainment.