Photo: Focus Features In Promising Young Woman, billed as a story of female power and a “new take” on revenge, Cassandra Thomas is mad as hell and she wants to teach you a lesson. An allegedly brilliant 30-year-old medical school dropout, Cassie lives with her parents, works at a coffee shop, and on the weekends plays a dangerous game.
Nina, Cassie’s best friend, exists in childhood photographs and somewhere offscreen as the motivation for Cassie’s late-night games, as well as the reason for her early exit from medical school. This narrative trick of obfuscation does nothing but create a listless sort of waiting for the majority of the film — what happened to her? And how does she relate to what Cassie’s doing now? — which is to say that there is very little plot to follow, but there are a lot of questions.
Promising Young Woman is a comedy so dark it’s illegible. Enter Gail , Cassie’s boss, and Ryan , her former schoolmate and soon-to-be love interest. Gail and Ryan desperately deliver comedic lines to varying degrees of success, as if trying to justify the movie’s comedy billing. The movie bounces between dimly lit scenes in seedy clubs and the bright lights of Cassie’s workplace with such speed that there’s never time to recalibrate yourself to its moods.
And so, Cassie performs. When her parents and her boss express confusion at what it is exactly she’s doing with her life, Cassie gets a boyfriend and performs the role of girlfriend. And the performance, all of it, is spectacular — the movie is never as good as Mulligan’s portrayal of Cassie. She is fascinating, wringing despair, boredom, and anger out of a one-ply character.
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