'Promising Young Woman' A Review

Promising Young Woman is a dark dramedy about Cassie(Carey Mulligan) 30 year-old who lives with her parents and works in a coffee shop, she was top of her class in med school but dropped out after the rape of her best friend Nina. The film opens on Cassie at a night club, seemingly drunk, and a 'nice guy' takes her home only to be confronted by a sober Cassie. This appears to be Cassie's nightly routine. Her life is shaken up however when an old med school classmate Ryan(Bo Burnham) re-enters her life opening up a greater scope of justice.

Mulligan gives the best performance of her career(to date)- nuanced, chimerical, brutally funny and sometimes just brutal. The subtle shifts in persona she achieves while enacting certain plans and dealing with different people is awe-inspiring not because they are big but because they are so intricate, immediate, and narrow. As the title suggests Cassie is incredibly smart and this is comes out in her erudite strategies and her unspoken but clearly rigid moralistic code. Much is inferred with the character, Mulligan is seldom straightforward, but as the film rolls steadily on we get a full picture of this complicated, traumatized, but powerful character. The supporting cast are equally pitch perfect, Laverne Cox as Cassie's boss and only friend is breezy, effortless, and charming. Burnham is a big surprise not with his humor but with his chemistry with Mulligan and his ability to hold his own with the stacked and more experienced cast. Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge as Cassie's parents are great, Molly Shannon and Alfred Molina make appearances, the cast is a murderers row with constant suprrises and they're all able to navigate the very tricky sometimes bizarre tone.

The cinematography is crystalline, it's movement relentless(much like Cassie), the soundtrack at times upbeat and humorous but never without irony and then the shift into the ominous and predatory. The production elements resonate not only with the cast but with the film's themes. And it's the themes and ideas of the film that really send it into the stratosphere- culpability, responsibility, forgiveness, trauma, revenge, justice- all threaded in, woven throughout with a deft hand, not bludgeoning but slashing, piercing unto the heart. The film is quite funny and at times extravagant but ultimately the goal is Truth and it hits it dead on. The ending may leave some wanting, it may not be what we wish but perhaps that is the price.

An absolute explosion of a performance from Mulligan, a tight thrilling funny story that has something to say and says it loudly. A Me Too film that not only reflects reality but inspires.

Currently available for rent on most VOD platforms.

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