3/10 I think we all really needed this. Three years after the Harvey Weinstein saga kicked into gear in October 2017, horrifically realizing the old casting couch, “who’d she blow for that role” stereotypes in a way that reveals what poor taste those jokes were always in, after four years of “grab her by the pussy,” it’s so wonderful to finally get some cinematic catharsis, an extravagant, brutal rape-revenge story in Promising Young Woman.
In the film, Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan) is a formerly promising young woman who dropped out of med school to take care of her friend Nina, who was gang-raped while blackout drunk and harassed off campus by her main assailant’s lawyer when she sought justice. Nina is referred to in the past tense throughout the film, and we’re meant to assume the worst. Thomas spends her weekends going to clubs and pretending to be extremely drunk, intending to lure in an opportunistic man to take her home and try to rape her. She then snaps out of it and…
…gives them a mild talking to. There’s no murdering, no dismemberment, none of that sort of graphic catharsis, she just sort of tells them off and enjoys the reversed power dynamic without actually employing it to any advantage.
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