Carey Mulligan is an actress of immense range. Since her breakout at the 2009 edition of Sundance with An Education, she’s given us many tremendous performances. All of them heartbreaking and deeply felt in different ways, whether she’s a replicant trying to make human connections (Never Let Me Go), F Scott Fitzgerald’s famous Daisy (The Great Gatsby), a broken sister singing her heart out as a last cry for help (Shame) or a wife and mother facing the dissolution of her marriage and the paucity of choices after (Wildlife). And once again she gives an exceptional performance in Promising Young Woman.
This time she’s Cassie, who at 30 still lives home with her parents (Clancy Brown and Jennifer Coolidge), whiles her days away working in a coffee shop where even the boss (Laverene Cox) thinks the job is beneath her. Little by little we find out the reason for her apathy. An event that happened during college made her dropout and become a sorta avenger against “nice guys” who take advantage of vulnerable women...
She goes out to nightclubs, pretends to be passed out drunk, allows guys to take her home. Then just as they are about to sexually abuse her she snaps awake. I don’t want to give away what she does next except to say those scenes are full of charged emotions and show Mulligan at her best playing with such actors as Adam Brody, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Samuel Richardson.
But that’s not all that Promising Young Women is about. Writer and director Emerald Fennell (Killing Eve) takes us on a revenge odyssey as Cassie revisits the people who wronged her in college. Those include a friend (Allison Brie) and the dean of her school (Connie Britton). These scenes go to the extreme as Fennel leads to believe that Cassie is capable of inflicting the same kind of violence that maybe was inflicted on her. Mulligan's commitment to this character shines and makes the unhinged plans that could appear cartoonish in a lesser actor’s hand very plausible.
And still that is not all. In the midst of all this mayhem there’s a sweet romantic comedy happening as Cassie reconnects with a nice doctor (Bo Burnham) from her days at med school. Could he be the salve to all her ails? I got whiplash from this sub plot. There’s a broad comedic scene where Cassie introduces her boyfriend to her parents, a cutesy bit where they sing and dance to a Paris Hilton pop song while shopping in a pharmacy. Where am I? Have we left the revenge quest and are now in a completely different movie?
These mismatching styles, genres and rhythms were jarring at times. What kind of film is Promising Young Woman trying to be? Fennel never seems to make up her mind even as all these narrative threads come together and we hurtle along quickly to the finale. Sometimes the film is asking us to take the issues of male entitlement and rape seriously. At other times Promising Young Woman is merely asking the audience to enjoy the chemistry of the actors. Mulligan is engaging and ferocious throughout and the reason to immediately buy a ticket. The genre elements and the comic books sensibility of Cassie’s story are fun to behold and could make this a popular hit. That is if audiences can keep their wits about them after the many jolts Fennel and Mulligan throw our way.