When Cassandra (Carrey Mulligan) is whistled after by construction workers, she stares over at the men on the other side of the street until they feel so uncomfortable and overwhelmed in the group that they turn away from her with protesting insults. But that’s the only scene in Emerald Fennell’s bitterly evil feature film debut “Promising Young Woman“, Which plays with wannabe macho clichés. Otherwise, the dark-black thriller comedy targets a completely different type of “man”: the “nice educated guy” who would probably describe himself as a “male feminist”.
Every weekend Cassandra plays the drunk in the clubs of the city – until just such a “nice guy” comes along, drags her into the taxi and brings her home. Although the guys on the trip reliably remember that you could still have a last nightcap with them. Even the casting is perfect: “OC, California” -chnuckel Adam Brody & “Superbad” sidekick Christopher Mintz-Plasse – two fan favorites with dachshund eyes that could hardly be imagined more likable and harmless. Priceless: The pure horror in her eyes when Cassandra, who is just lying there unconscious, reveals that she has not really had a single sip of alcohol.
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Cassandra (Carrey Mulligan) just pretends to be hopelessly drunk …
A little later you can see Cassandra adding a line to her notebook before going to bed. There are already a lot of lines. What happens to the men between these two moments and why Cassandra is after them in the first place is something the audience won’t find out until later – but it’s not what you might think at first. Emerald Fennell, who can currently be seen as Camilla Parker Bowles in the Netflix hit “The Crown” and is responsible for the second season of the series phenomenon “Killing Eve” as a showrunner, wanted a rape with her debut as a feature film director and writer – & – Tell the Revenge story, in which the woman doesn’t behave like a man for a change during her campaign of revenge …
… and she succeeded. Whereby the “female” revenge in the case of “Promising Young Woman” is just as merciless, but also more elegant, clever and also mercilessly entertaining! As a congenial partner, Emerald Fennell, who also made a cameo appearance as a YouTube instructor with make-up tips for blowjob lips, can rely on her leading actress: Carey Mulligan (“The Great Gatsby”) not only delivers a multi-layered performance like you are absolutely not used to such thieving and evil genre flicks – even your second Oscar nomination after “An Education” seems to be within reach. She admits the disaffected protagonist, who even forgets her own 30th birthday, to have an astonishing degree of ambivalence.
An ambiguous pleasure
It is always in the mood to go on her vengeance campaign with Cassandra – but that doesn’t mean that you keep your fingers crossed for her 100 percent in every scene. When she suggests to her former dean (Connie Britton) that she has left her underage daughter in the room of some untrustworthy college students, you have to swallow hard.
In any case, it is above all the scenes in which the revenge is directed against women that particularly challenge the audience – for example during a dinner appointment with her former fellow student Madison (Alison Brie), who will think three times in the future whether women really are are to blame for everything if they have drunk too much before.
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… to put the “nice” guys who just want to “bring them home safely home” into a mess later on.
When “Promising Young Woman” turns onto the home straight, a cell phone video that suddenly appears ensures that the previously hinted at ambivalence dissolves a little into thin air. But that’s not bad at all, because Emerald Fennell mercilessly exploits the supposed security of the audience, who at this point thinks they are in a certainly not typical, but somehow manageable black thriller-comedy, to knock it off with an incredibly intense finale .
The final twists and turns of “Promising Young Woman” will certainly be talked about and discussed a lot more – like the film as a whole. But no matter how you accept the final Twist low blow, whether you simply accept it as a consequence or whether you resist it for a while – at least the last few seconds of the film have something incredibly satisfying and cathartic about them …
Conclusion: A really nice and nasty revenge film that repeatedly hits its audience powerfully in the pit of the stomach, but at the same time provides a clever and perfidious pleasure.
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