PLOT- A young woman, traumatized by a tragic event in her past, seeks vengeance against those who crossed her path.
REVIEW- In “Promising Young Woman,” Carey Mulligan plays Cassandra, a former medical student living in Ohio, with her parents. And they are so keen for her to move out that they give her a suitcase for her 30th birthday.
The suitcase is pink, a color that dominates the palette of “Promising Young Woman”.
Cassie, it turns out, is no Gen-Z slacker nursing a generational sense of entitlement and directionless ennui. Because she may be bored out of her gourd working a dead-end job at a coffee shop, but she’s a woman on a mission, the precise contours of which come into increasingly jarring focus along with the details of Cassie’s strange yet utterly banal story.
Written and directed by Emerald Fennell, “Promising Young Woman” often acts as a sort of best friend to “Killing Eve”. Which comes from a director famously known as Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Like roommates who are thisclose, the movie and TV show swap clothes and colorways and a feminist sensibility that cuts deep enough to draw blood. Mulligan’s Carrie is a cutie-pie. Her blond hair is perpetually gathered into an attractively messy updo, her tastes running to soft, flower-festooned sweaters. Her invulnerable femininity is her superpower. She might as well have L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E Beadazzled on her candy-colored nails. Robert Mitchum has tattooed on his knuckles in the clip of “Night of the Hunter” that serves as one of Fennell’s frequent knowing winks.
Keeping her own counsel, Cassie goes about her plan with the single-mindedness of the A-student she once was. At the same time, a toxic caramel macchiato of grief, rage, and vengeance roils underneath.
