Yes No Maybe So: "Promising Young Woman"
Tuesday, October 13, 2020 at 8:30AM by Lynn Lee
Could this be Carey Mulligan’s year? When the first trailer for Promising Young Woman hit theaters last December, this viewer, at least, immediately sat up and took notice. Mulligan plays emphatically against type as a modern-day nemesis aptly named Cassandra, self-packaged as a poisoned bonbon of sexual pliability, and spurred to vengeance by an unpunished rape that caused her to drop out of medical school. Reviews at Sundance affirmed the power of Mulligan’s performance, and the movie seemed poised to remind the world that she’s still a formidable actress who deserves way more attention than she’s received since her breakout Oscar-nominated turn in An Education.
Then the pandemic happened, and PYW’s release—originally set for April— was indefinitely pushed back. Now it’s rescheduled for Christmas Day, and the movie poster and a second trailer have dropped. Will it be enough to get Mulligan in the 2020 awards conversation? Let’s break the trailer down, YNMS style...
YES
• CAREY MULLIGAN CAREY MULLIGAN CAREY MULLIGAN …oh, we need another reason to watch? But seriously, this looks like the Mulligan role we never knew we needed, from her quiet one-word indictment (“You”) of the dean who refused to hold a rapist accountable to the witheringly drawled “Can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is?” that makes her naughty-nurse cosplay suddenly terrifying. Interspersed with glimpses of the vulnerability we already know is in Mulligan’s wheelhouse, the overall effect of her precisely channeled rage is to tantalize the viewer – like the men in her character’s orbit – with the possibilities of just how far this “promising” young woman is willing to go.
• Has Connie Britton become the go-to actress for playing female enablers of the patriarchy? (See also Beatriz at Dinner, Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, Bombshell.) It’s still a bit discomfiting for those of us who fondly remember her as Tami Taylor from “Friday Night Lights,” but in some ways a natural evolution. Because she’s so good at playing these outwardly pleasant, seemingly “reasonable” faces of a fundamentally oppressive system.
• Laverne Cox’s pitch-perfect “Really” in response to that dude’s whining is my everything.
• Also love the ironic punctuation provided by Britney Spears’ “Toxic.”
Can you guess what every woman's worst nightmare is?
NO
• Unlike the first trailer, this one suffers from an excess of quick cuts and frenetic over-editing. With the exception of the extended Mulligan-Britton exchange, the rest of the shots are too short to figure out who anyone is or what is really going on.
• This trailer also visually presents Cassie as a kind of female Joker, from the cotton candy-colored streaked hair to the carefully smeared lipstick. Maybe the parallels are deliberate (side note: Margot Robbie, aka Harley Quinn, is one of the movie's producers, and one can easily imagine her playing the lead here), but…just, no.
• Christmas Day release? If this is going to be theaters only… that’s a hard pass for me and most of the likely audience for this movie, barring a COVID Christmas Day miracle.
MAYBE SO
• Is this a black comedy? Rape revenge thriller? A bit of both, according to Murtada, who noted its whiplash-inducing shifts in tone in his Sundance review. Writer-director Emerald Fennell, who was the showrunner for season 2 of “Killing Eve,” seems to be applying a similar MO and aesthetic here.
• Bo Burnham plays a seemingly genuinely nice guy who’s genuinely smitten with Cassie (though you can’t necessarily tell that from the trailer). I’m a little worried – because I like BB – that at least one of these things will turn out not to be true.
• Who is Alfred Molina’s character? I have no idea, but I do enjoy his delivery of the line about the piper – “She has to be paid!”
I’m a “yes”—at least if/when a streaming option is available—but not so much based on this trailer. I recommend checking out the earlier trailer for a more coherent (if not necessarily more accurate) idea of what it’s about
Are you a yes, no, or maybe so for Promising Young Woman?
Reader Comments (20)
Huge yes. Been excitedly waiting for it for months, mostly due to Mulligan but the trailer's great too. I'm concerned about it managing the tone (Killing Eve often failed at that after season 1), but still want to see it - provided it's streaming.
Hell yes. This looks fantastic. It also seems like a pretty big departure for Mulligan, which is exciting.
I never watch trailers of the films I’m really interested in, so I’m still a Yes, of course.
can't wait! i'm a definite yes.
This new trailer gives a little too much away, but it doesn't change my interest in the film. I was a YES months ago and I'm a YES now.
It's interesting that you say this new trailer presents the character as a female Joker/Harley Quinn type, because I had already anticipated comparisons to those characters (and their respective films) when the first one dropped.
Pity about Mulligan,she was right there in Wildlife 2 years ago but no one took notice,I have hopes set mid bar for her chances,hoping to be surprised.
The Molina-Mulligan reunion might creep me out after An Education!
Mulligan alone is a YES from me.
The sophomore trailer makes the movie less appealing. Whereas the original didn't feel like an attempt to put lipstick on a pig.
This looks awesome, but I won't be going to the theater any time soon.
Dying to see this.
100% yaaaaas! This may be my most eagerly anticipated film of 2020 (outside Nomadland, of course), so Christmas can't come soon enough as far as I'm concerned.
P.S. Bonus points for Mulligan's ironic chuckle at Britton's ridiculously tone-deaf "ruin a young man's life" remark. A+
I've been yes since the first trailer. I've been waiting since January for this and I'm glad it finally has a release date. It just disappeared off the schedule in April even when other films from the distributor got some kind of release.
Looks good but I’ve heard a lot of bad things.
This is my favorite film of the year so far. I think that this new trailer suggests a tone that isn't really present in the film. I had high expectations going in and they were met and I'd say exceeded. Whether it's only an in-theaters release is another question, though I'd imagine that will be the case before an early 2021 VOD release.
OH HELL YEAH!!!!
YES!
It's about time Carey Mulligan gets the attention of the Academy again. And for a role which seems so different tan her breakthrough one.
NO
The first trailer was way better. I really hate that poster.
But yeah, I'm a committed YES.
YES! It's the movie that I've been wanting to see all year!
This is following the new standard for Universal films where they get released in theaters so AMC won't kill them and go on demand 17 days later.
There is a link between Cassandra and Greek mythology: Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo in Greek mythology cursed to utter true prophecies, but never to be believed.
To read about Casandra: https://www.ancientworldmagazine.com/articles/wretched-cassandra/
After reading this, I am even more eager to watch Carey Mulligan as Cassandra
Hopefully she is getting a lot of buzz