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?