Promising Young Woman

DIRECTOR EMERALD FENNELL

RELEASE DATE 17 APRIL

STARRING CAREY MULLIGAN, LAVERNE COX,

BO BURNHAM, ALISON BRIE, ADAM BRODY,

CHRISTOPHER MINTZ-PLASSE, CONNIE BRITTON, ALFRED MOLINA, JENNIFER COOLIDGE, CLANCY BROWN

CERTIFICATE TBC

RUNNING TIME 113 MINS

FILMMAKER EMERALD FENNELL IS NO STRANGER TO BRINGING STRONG, UNCOMPROMISING WOMEN TO THE SCREEN. As an actress, she has starred in films like Anna Karenina and The Danish Girl, and TV series including Call The Midwife and The Crown. As a writer, she served as showrunner and writer for the second season of the BBC’s multiple award-winning female assassin drama Killing Eve, receiving a Primetime Emmy nomination for the season two episode, Nice And Neat.

Much like that groundbreaking show, however, there’s nothing traditionally nice or neat about the protagonist of Fennell’s striking feature debut, Promising Young Woman. Although Cassie, played by Carey Mulligan, may look like a smart, 30-year-old professional, she leads a secret double life. Fuelled by a past trauma that abruptly derailed her future, Cassie takes it upon herself to take often-brutal revenge on the myriad men who try to take advantage of her seemingly inebriated state; the film’s tagline is ‘Take her home and take your chances”.

This is a story that Fennell has been wanting to tell since she made her Sundance Grand Jury Prize-nominated short film Careful How You Go, about three malevolent women, in 2018.

“I wanted to make a movie about how a real woman might take revenge,” Fennell recently told the LA Times. “It’s a revenge thriller, it’s a romantic comedy, it subverts a lot of tropes that we’re used to seeing.” Casting was absolutely key, and Mulligan was her first choice for the role of Carrie –a character that requires vulnerability, power and a dark sense of humour. “Because Carey often plays period roles, I don’t think we have seen her be as funny as she is in real life,” Fennell told Empire magazine. “She brings an intense depth and wryness to it.” For Mulligan, who has in recent years made a conscious decision to collaborate with female directors like Sarah Gavron (Suffragette) and Dee Rees (Mudbound), the role grabbed her as soon as she laid eyes on the script.

“I’d never read anything like it,” Mulligan said in an interview with Variety at the Sundance Film Festival, where the film made its debut to glowing reviews. “Reading it for the first time made me nervous in a really good way, in a way that makes me excited to be part of something.”

Although Mulligan is the ferocious catalyst of Promising Young Woman, she is surrounded by a stellar supporting cast, including Alison Brie (TV’s GLOW), Adam Brody (Ready Or Not), Bo Burnham (The Big Sick) and Laverne Cox (TV’s Orange Is The New Black). There’s also some hefty talent behind the scenes; the film has been produced by Oscarnominated actress Margot Robbie (Birds Of Prey) through her LuckyChap Entertainment.

If you’re one of the three million-plus people who has watched the Promising Young Woman trailer since it debuted in December, you’ll know that Fennell has also assembled a slick filmmaking team, including cinematographer Benjamin Kracun (Beast) and production designer Michael Perry (Under The Silver Lake), to deliver a visual impact as powerful as the narrative. Music is pitch-perfect, too; that menacing, seductive strings version of Britney Spears’ Toxic, which plays in the trailer, is joined by classics like The Weather Girls’ It’s Raining Men, all bolstered by an evocative score by Anthony Willis.

An unforgettable feminist revenge fantasy, and one of the year’s most hotly anticipated titles, Promising Young Woman is film that most definitely leaves its mark.

Nikki Baughan

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