Please Note: This blog post contains movie spoilers.
I watched Promising Young Woman a few months ago. I both liked it and didn’t like it.
Cassie, the protagonist of the film, struggles to cope with and fully accept the loss of her best friend Nina in the wake of a traumatic sexual assault Nina experienced at university. Immediately following Nina’s death, Cassie drops out of medical school, abandons her dream career as a doctor, and moves back in with her parents. Her once promise-filled life becomes empty of joy and meaning as her best friend’s death and its cruel circumstances continue to weigh on her.
What I Liked
The Depiction of Grief and Guilt
I appreciated the frank portrayal of sadness and heartbreak that can persist years after the death of a loved one. The powerful feelings and memories associated with devastating losses rarely immediately subside. The consequential events that led to Nina’s death are unceasingly replayed and examined by Cassie, bolstering the torment and grief she has harboured since the death of her best friend.
In addition to her grief, Cassie discloses to Nina’s mother her agonizing regret for being absent while her best friend was perilously vulnerable. This intimate admission of guilt illustrates a seldom-spoken emotional facet of loss: self-blame. Cassie, brilliantly played by Carey Mulligan, faithfully demonstrates the complex and enduring sorrow one can experience after the loss of a loved one.
A Spotlight on Sexual Assault
The impact of sexual assault on victims and their loved ones is the principal theme of this Oscar-nominated movie. In particular, Promising Young Woman focuses on the pervasive societal minimization of sexual assault and its potential for a fatal outcome, such as Nina’s suicide. While the topic of sexual assault is raised on occasion in mainstream news, it is important for art to continue to speak on this issue to turn a tide in how sexual assault is commonly handled.
As depicted in Promising Young Woman, victims of sexual assault can suffer in silence because their stories are neither believed nor taken seriously. Ideally, with a collective awareness of the severe ramifications of sexual assault, victims are listened to, serious investigations are carried out, and the guilty perpetrators are fairly imprisoned and rehabilitated.
“’Til it happens to you, you don’t know”
A sobering adage that Promising Young Woman drives home is “’Til it happens to you, you don’t know,” an evocative, focal line that is hauntingly repeated in the 2015 Oscar-nominated song “Til It Happens To You” by Lady Gaga.
Cassie is deeply disturbed by Nina’s sexual assault while her college peers and administrative officials continue to casually overlook the seriousness of the incident. During a rendezvous, Madison, a former friend, dismisses Nina’s death as a consequence of drinking too much and putting oneself in a vulnerable situation. A prominent school official, whom Nina had disclosed her assault to, expresses her resistance to ruining a young man’s career prospects by investigating a “routine” complaint.
These two women come to understand their fatal error in judgment when Cassie effectively evokes the same helplessness and despair that Nina experienced during and in the aftermath of her public assault. These scenes boldly illustrate the prevailing indifference towards victims of sexual assault and the painful realization of its impact when personally experienced.
What I Didn’t Like
The Drunk Girl Routine
The trailer for Promising Young Woman cunningly promotes the narrative that Cassie “strikes out” opportunistic young men who callously prey on her apparent inebriated state. The actual consequences she delivers are a sober call-out of their unsavoury behaviour and a stern warning not to repeat their abhorrent actions against other women.
While noble in its intentions, I believe these nightly censures hinder Cassie from addressing the underlying motivation for her nightclub persona: her grief. This deliberate, repeated exposure to the precursors of sexual assault undoubtedly maintains Cassie’s depression as it is a dark and disturbing reminder of the trauma Nina experienced. What’s more, Cassie’s strategic positioning at clubs and bars may not always radically transform men’s behaviour and could instead lead to aggression and violence towards her. The drunk girl routine is a profound symptom of the untreated sorrow Cassie experienced as a result of her best friend’s death that could further harm her emotional health and risk her physical safety.
The Revenge Tour
Through her cautious courtship with Ryan, a pediatrician and former classmate, Cassie learns Nina’s attacker, Al Monroe, is a successful anesthesiologist. This news ignites Cassie’s desire for revenge on Al and on those who callously reinforced Nina’s suffering after the sexual assault was raised. Madison is convinced she is the victim of a non-consensual one-night stand while the prominent school official, Dean Walker, believes her daughter is captivated by her favourite performers who will easily exploit her chaperone-less state. The two women’s continued minimization and dismissal of Nina’s accusation understandably provokes the desire for reprisal for their harmful neglect and oversight.
While Cassie’s revenge tour does achieve short-term retaliation on Madison and Dean Walker, I believe it would not meet its other intended goal of meaningfully altering their beliefs and actions in the long term. While their initial shock of their fictional traumatic circumstances may offer a realistic glimpse of the despair Nina experienced, their intense discomfort would eventually wear off as their normal lives resume. Without severe trauma weighing their day-to-day, which Cassie justly withheld during her retribution, it is difficult for those who are as self-centred as Madison and Dean Walker to fully understand the emotional stranglehold many victims of abuse and assault suffer.
As a result of the revenge tour, the story of Nina and Cassie would be a troubling recollection instead of an edifying reminder to take sexual assault allegations seriously.
Cassie’s Death
The finale of the revenge tour eliminates any hope for Cassie’s emotional revival and spiritual resurrection. Cassie disguises herself as a nurse stripper to gatecrash Al’s bachelor party soon after she discovers its location.
After separating Al from his guests, Cassie ties him to a bed and assures Al his fidelity to his fiancée won’t be compromised. Al requests her name and becomes agitated when Cassie responds with the name of his victim, “Nina Fisher.” Ignoring his despicable excuses for the assault, Cassie straddles him with a knife in hand and vows to inscribe Nina’s name all over his body, so Al would never forget her.
The ensuing struggle loosens one of Al’s ties and allows Al to successfully push Cassie off him. He desperately throws a pillow over her head and applies an unrelenting pressure that eventually leads Cassie to suffocate to death.
Cassie and Nina do avenge their deaths in the end, though it is extremely disheartening to see the culpable individuals, who were both present at Nina’s assault and who concealed Cassie’s murder, arrested after the women died. It is unsettling to believe further tragedy was necessary in order for justice to be served. Cassie likely held this assumption herself, derived from the continued diminishment of Nina’s suicide throughout the film, as she entered the remote cabin accommodating Al’s bachelor party to irrevocably seek closure for herself and her deceased best friend.
