Title: Promising Young Woman
Writer: Emerald Fennell
Genre: Dark comedy / Tragedy / Satire / Rape-revenge
Below:
Narrative Analysis
Story Analysis
Character Analysis
Overall
Synopsis (start here if you haven’t seen the film or need a refresher)
Narratives / Tropes / Messages
What is the story trying to say? What is the thing that you hope the audience will be left believing about the world when they finish watching? The logical take away from the story is that there is a direct line between sexual assault and death. The way that the story is set up, we are to understand that Nina committed suicide as a direct result of being raped and we are given no further insight into any other mental health issues that may have also been at play.
Cassie makes a similar choice to die as a way to cope with Nina’s death. The way the narrative is currently set up, it presents no other option for survivors of sexual violence than using their agency to choose death. Is that the statement that it is trying to make? What is the point that the story is trying to make by making that statement? The answers to those questions are not obvious through the script. Without at least a little clarity as to what point the story is trying to make by equating sexual assault to death, that reads as a disturbing message.
How does the story challenge or reinforce dominant narratives around sexual assault?:
Narrative 1: We need to believe women. This is an important counter narrative to the historically dominant narrative that silences and erases women’s experience through the narrative that it’s difficult to prove/maybe the women were asking for it/we don’t want to ruin the man’s life narratives that have persisted for a long time. The idea that society needs to believe women is one that should continue to be reinforced and amplified over and over through the media.
The script does a clear job of illustrating how society’s lack of response to rape can be just as damaging as the act itself. However, the script misses an opportunity to truly amplify that idea because it does not give the audience a chance to learn anything of substance about Nina. It essentially carries out the same trope of erasing and silencing women by never allowing the audience to know Nina. If the script was choosing to satirize this idea by reinforcing it, it did not go far enough to make that an obvious choice, and instead actually reinforces that problematic idea.
Narrative 2:The victim trope. The sexual assault survivor community has worked to shift public perception of women who have experienced sexual violence from victims to survivors. The victim trope also reinforces the idea that once a woman experiences any type of sexual assault, that experience becomes the defining factor of their life. Unfortunately, the script makes some choices that ultimately reinforce the victim trope.
The first is the choice of how the script depicts Nina. From the few things we learn about her through Cassie’s eyes, she was a smart, successful, and strong young woman on her way to becoming a doctor. While, of course, experiencing rape can be life altering, and coupled with the experience of not being believed and feeling powerless, framed as a liar or a slut, and harassed, can be extremely traumatic, this is also a reality many women face regularly, and survive. By only defining Nina by her experience of being raped, with no other context, and then her suicide, defines her only by that experience as a victim. If the point is to message that women who are raped are often erased, the way that the story does this ends up reinforcing that problem because it doesn’t build empathy for her or a curiosity to know her. If the script gave Nina a little more agency, this might help to lessen the feeling of that narrative.
The second way that it reinforces that trope is by developing Cassie’s character to be a singularly-minded character who can only think about Nina’s rape and suicide and only defines herself through that lens. Giving more depth to Cassie’s character, giving her other interests or stories unrelated to Nina and allowing her to be a whole person, can help to calibrate on that narrative.
Narrative 3: Consent. Consent is often associated with sex and a person’s agency and choice as to whether or not to engage in the act. While the film doesn’t address consent head on, other than to imply that Nina’s experience was non-consensual, there were other, implicit ways that the story undermined the idea of consent more broadly. Consent isn’t just about sex. It is expressed permission by one person to another that they are okay with the other person doing something on their behalf, to them, for them, or about them. With that broader definition of consent, are we to believe that Cassie is carrying out this revenge per Nina’s request? If not, what is the story saying about consent? It’s okay in some cases but not in others? Again, is it trying to make some type of statement about consent? Based on Cassie’s actions, is it trying to make the statement that we are all actually perpetrators? If the script is trying to say that, it is a stretch to get there through the current narrative. If not, it is a problematic omission that it doesn’t seem that Cassie ever considers what Nina might have wanted or what is best for Nina as she seeks out this revenge on her behalf. While there might not be such a thing as receiving the consent of the dead, the script does give us Nina’s mother’s perspective (which is the closest we can get to Nina) who literally tells Cassie that what she is doing “(is) no good for Nina,” when referring to Cassie’s behavior.
Cassie’s lack of consideration for Nina, and of her doing this of her own volition no longer makes this a rape-revenge story. If the script is trying to make the point that we are all perpetrators, it should go much farther to get that point across. If that is not the intention, it may want to make clear that this is what Nina would have wanted, or have the person the story is about be the person who experienced the violence and carry out the revenge on behalf of themself.
How does the story reinforce or subvert dominant narratives around gender norms?
Narrative 4: Women are emotional, prone to overreacting, irrational, and crazy. It’s difficult to tell if the story is reinforcing or challenging this very old trope. This is because it is unclear what the script’s perspective on Cassie is. At first, the script puts her in a situation in a room with men, where they react as if she is crazy, as Neil, one of the men from the bar called her, “psycho”, but the script is on her side and positions her as the sane one in the situation. This sets her up as the hero that we are rooting for. There is even a conversation between Cassie and Dean Walker where the dean straight up asks Cassie if she is crazy, and Cassie replies “no.”
But this tone starts to shift into problematically reinforcing this trope shortly thereafter, when Cassie smashes GEORGE, a random dude’s car with a baseball bat. He too, calls her crazy, but this time, we start to think that maybe she might be and begin to question her reliability as our narrator. Crazy comes up again when Paul, the man at the bar who is taking her home in the scene where she runs into Ryan, calls her crazy and psycho, we are starting to be inclined to believe him. Once she sees the video of Nina’s rape, the way she is acting causes us to no longer be rooting for her. So by the time she is about to carve Nina’s name into Al and he says she is out of her mind and insane, we are sort of, horrifically, on Al’s side. By the end of the script, regardless of whether or not we are upset by her demise, the residual feeling that we are left with is that Cassie was in fact crazy.
It would be great if the script at this point held up a mirror to the audience to show them how it manipulated them into being on Al’s side and thinking Cassie was crazy. But the script doesn’t provide something to challenge that parting thought, so if it was trying to make a statement about women being historically wrongfully portrayed as crazy to challenge it, that seed didn’t feel like it planted enough to question that belief that she is crazy by the end of the script.
Narrative 5: Women’s sexuality is a trap. The story fixates on Cassie’s being sexually appealing and then dangerous to men, and never subverts this tired characterization of women’s sexuality and beauty ultimately being a dangerous trap for men. Are we to understand that men can’t learn from women? Only be humiliated and terrified by them?
Narrative 6: The “nice guy” trope. Is the script making the statement that there is no such thing as a good man? By never introducing one male character who is decent, it makes a strong statement that no man can ever be trusted. So much so, that Cassie predicted, and rightfully so, that she would be murdered at a party of doctors. Is the message of the film that a woman should never trust a man? What is the purpose of being that reductive? Is there a point that is trying to be made? If so, it needs to be made stronger in order for the audience to understand that it’s a point or if not, the script should provide some evidence that there are men that aren’t terrible at some point in the story.
The idea that men continue to get away with things at the expense of women’s wellbeing and lives seems to be the central thesis that the script is trying to prove. However, if that is the point it's trying to prove, then in order to prove that thesis, Al must get away with Cassie’s murder. Otherwise, the script contradicts itself.
The story does an excellent job of provoking emotional and visceral reactions. It’s likely that the audience will walk away thinking and feeling many different things and hold many contradictory opinions. While it’s great for a movie to inspire conversation and generate controversy, there is an impact concern that because the narrative seems to try to confuse the audience’s expectations, it’s difficult to tell where the story lands or what it is actually trying to say, potentially leaving a lasting imprint on people, subliminally or consciously, that reinforces problematic dominant narratives about sexual assault, women, and gender norms that may actually (unintentionally) uphold the oppressive patriarchal values it is seemingly trying to subvert.
Story
What world are we inhabiting in this story? A lot of confusion in the story is because it isn’t clear what reality the script is rooted in. The world that the script builds appears very much like our modern day, audience-lived reality. Without providing any extremes that can point to it being a satire or that the choices it's making are ironic, it’s easy to take the story at face value and believe that the script believes what it is saying. Because it feels so rooted in our current reality, it is difficult to write off the problematic narratives and tropes being put forward as a critical statement or social commentary rather than a truth.
Is the moral of the story that revenge is accomplished/justice served when the police show up? Are the police supposed to be the “heroes” in the end? That idea could work if this were very clearly a satire, however, if the police being heroes at the end is social commentary about how problematic that idea is, that irony isn’t obvious. In fact, the script makes it feel like the police are definitely the heroes by inserting comedic elements all around them- the women at the wedding doing a new age-y type dance, Al’s friend Joe who helped cover up the murder trying to tiptoe out into the woods to escape, Cassie’s winky face text - and only taking the police seriously in the middle of all of that comedy.
It could be very funny, in a depressing and ironic way, to make the police the heroes at the end for many reasons, because - 1) they are rarely the heroes in rape cases; 2) they are a symbol for systemic structural violence; 3) they literally didn’t need to do anything to solve this case, it was just handed to them; 4) the vindication at the end isn’t even about Nina’s rape, it’s about Cassie’s murder. However, the hilarity and irony of that, if that is supposed to be the statement the end is making, is not dialed up enough for the audience to pick up on as satire. It truly reads as though the police are the actual heroes coming in to save the day by arresting Al.
Why is the lawyer absolved?: While Cassie is alive, the only people who are impacted by Cassie’s “revenge” are the female characters - Madison, Dean Walker, with the Dean’s daughter an innocent bystander. The only man Cassie targets is the lawyer, Jordan, who had knowingly and consciously done the most bad to the most people by defending the perpetrators. Why is he forgiven for his past indiscretions just because he realizes they were bad? If the script is aiming to make a point that society absolves men but continues to hold women accountable for even less, that wasn’t a loud enough point to be heard. If that was not the intention, then it may be worth rethinking who and how people are held accountable, judged, and punished in Cassie’s revenge plot. Upholding the trope that just because a person has seen the error of their ways means they should be absolved of their past sins is problematic, especially in this case.
Characters
What is Cassie’s character supposed to symbolize? There is something promising about how the film begins. Cassie’s strategy for coping with Nina’s rape and suicide is to educate men - albeit through unconventional methods - about the actual violence of their socially accepted behavior. The repetition of this lesson seems to be Cassie’s current life project, her only real motivation or source of stimulation. But the script - while seemingly trying to be on Cassie’s side - doesn’t actually take her choices seriously. We never get to see whether her efforts, and frankly the risks she is taking with her own body and safety, actually pay off.
Cassie, a supposedly brilliant, scientifically-minded person, isn’t given the opportunity to see if her hypothesis is true, to refine her experiment, to actually engage meaningfully in her own life, regardless of how self-destructive her chosen path may appear to others. Beyond their initial humiliation and fear, we see nothing of the men she attempts to effect. If the script’s intention is to take Cassie’s side as the hero, it could take the opportunity to use these opening scenes not as an audience shock factor/gimmick, but as an opportunity to establish Cassie as an intelligent and complex person who was not simply acting in a repetitive loop but putting her mind and body to meaningful service in response to a life-altering experience. Instead, we don’t get to know Cassie as her own person at all. We only ever understand her in relationship to Nina and Nina’s rape and suicide. This is unfortunate in a story that, it seems, thinks it is empowering women.
Was the use of developing supporting and ancillary male characters, while diminishing supporting and ancillary female characters intentional? It is notable that the supporting and ancillary female characters are all undeveloped while the men are all given substance and complexity. Was this trying to be an intentional statement at how women continue to be overlooked? Again, if it was, more needs to be done to make it obvious that this was a conscious narrative choice. There is Cassie’s mom, who just seems to be sad and upset all the time and comes across as very weak and fragile. Nina’s mom, who we only get to meet for a minute and don’t learn anything about other than that she seems to be annoyed with Cassie’s grief, though we don’t know why. There are Madison and Dean Walker, who, even after experiencing trauma caused by Cassie, don’t have an arc because we never see if what Cassie did actually taught them something or changed them. There’s Al’s bikini-model fiance, who reads like a helpless damsel. And there is Gail, who seems like a device used to lift up and champion Cassie because Cassie doesn’t believe in herself. We learn nothing about Gail other than her supportiveness of Cassie.
On the flipside, we have the male supporting characters. Jordan, who has nuance, having an arc, albeit, one that we don’t see, but that we hear about, from being a cut throat harasser of sexual assault plaintiffs to realizing the error of his ways and his need for redemption. Even Al, the script’s choice to have him say no to Cassie’s advances at the bachelor party gives him nuance and depth to signal he’s changed, at least a little, that none of the supporting female characters are afforded.
Overall
All the above notes that were given may have been in response to intentional decisions made by the screenwriter to make statements about certain issues or point out hypocrisies, but if that is true, they did not come across as such. If the story wasn’t trying to make those statements and is rooted in the reality of the world, then it goes too far. If the story is trying to make those statements through irony or satire, then the story doesn’t go far enough. Is this a satire? Is this a dark comedy? Is this a tragedy? While stories can be more than one thing, it can be harmful or dangerous when something is so muddled and the point so obfuscated, that the end result is either reinforcing what it’s trying to deconstruct or, potentially worse, introducing even more problematic narratives under the guise of being artsy. If you expect the audience to work too much, you risk them missing what you are trying to say and ultimately reinforcing the thing you are trying to refute or make a point about. Cassie’s bar gimmick shock-factor tactic is effective because she holds a mirror up to her perpetrator for them to see themselves. We need the script to do the same in order for the things the script is seemingly trying to do actually stick or sink in at the end.
The most important question to grapple with is - How does the choice of making the circumstances around the rape and suicide confusing help or hurt the larger narrative around rape culture, sexual assault, trauma, and suicide? What is this script's contribution to that narrative? Based on these notes, was that the intention? Or was the intention different than the impact? And if so, how can that be amended?
Synopsis
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is about CASSIE (29), a med-school drop out who now works at a coffee shop managed by her friend, GAIL (40s). Cassie has an interesting pastime, she goes to bars, pretends to be extremely intoxicated, and waits for a “nice guy” to offer to help her get home but instead, as predicted, he takes her to his place. At some point after the man has started to get handsy at her drunken objection, Cassie finally reveals to them that she’s been totally lucid the entire time, shocking and embarrassing the self-identifying “nice guy.”
From a series of allusions, we learn that Cassie has a friend who is no longer in the picture, NINA, though it’s unclear early on what happened to her, other than she and Cassie dropped out of medical school together. One day at the coffee shop, RYAN (30s) orders a cup and recognizes Cassie from medical school. He asks her out and at first she resists, but after some persistence, she accepts.
Their date is great, except that at the end of the date while they are walking, they “accidentally” end up in front of Ryan’s place. While he realizes his mistake and tries to apologize for trying to move things too fast, her belief that he truly is a nice guy is compromised and she angrily leaves. We later learn that Nina was raped while they were at school and that soon thereafter, she commit suicide. Cassie dropped out of school to take care of her friend, and after her death, was never the same. From that point on, she did not trust men. But something changes in Cassie, and she decides to ask Ryan for a second date.
Cassie’s reencounter with her medical school past, especially hearing about the lives of AL, Nina’s rapist, who is now getting married, and the other people who were Nina’s rape-deniers, triggers Cassie to begin to plot revenge against them. She targets MADISON, who was the first friend Nina confided in, but she didn’t believe her. Cassie confronts Madison about what happened while getting her drunk at a hotel bar. Madison stands by her story that Nina was overreacting. Cassie has hired TONY to wait at the hotel bar and take the very drunk Madison up to a hotel room and make it seem like he and Madison had sex. Cassie then targets the dean of the medical school, DEAN WALKER. The dean tells Cassie that she can’t believe all the women who report these experiences at the risk of ruining these promising young men’s lives. Cassie then tells the dean that she has delivered the Dean’s teenage daughter, AMBER to a group of drunk college boys. The dean freaks out, until finally Cassie reveals that she just took Amber to a coffee shop. Finally, she targets the JORDAN who defended Nina’s rapist, AL. But when she gets to Jordan's house, she learns that he has quit and had a revelation about the error of his ways and can barely live with himself. She absolves him and forgives him.
Cassie and Ryan have been seeing each other a bit when Cassie runs into Ryan during one of her bar stunts. He is upset and she realizes that she could lose him. This prompts her to let go of her revenge plot and her bar nights and try to get him back, which she does. They end up having a wonderful whirlwind romance. She even brings him home to meet her parents. They are so relieved that she has come back to her old self. This is until Madison shows up at Cassie’s with a video of Nina’s assault. In the video is Ryan, who is a bystander and does nothing to stop it. This triggers Cassie to go to Ryan and threaten him with releasing the tape unless he tells her where Al’s bachelor party is going to be.
Cassie dresses up as a nurse stripper and shows up at the bachelor party, which is in a secluded cabin in the woods. She takes Al to the bedroom, which he initially resists because he wants to be faithful. She pretends she won’t do anything to him but convinces him to let her handcuff him to the bed. She then attempts to carve Nina’s name on his stomach with a scalpel, but Al is able to break out of one of the cuffs and stop her. There is a tussle between them, but Al is able to get a pillow over Cassie’s face and ends up smothering her to death.
Finally, JOE, one of his friends from the party, comes in to find Al, still handcuffed to the bed, with Cassie’s dead body by his side. They take it out into the woods and burn it. A lame missing person’s hunt ensues, with a weak police questioning of Ryan, who doesn’t tell them that the last place he knew Cassie was, was at the bachelor party.
Ryan is at Al’s wedding when the POLICE show up and arrest Al for Cassie’s murder. It turns out that Cassie, anticipating her demise, sent her whereabouts to the absolved lawyer, as well as the video of Nina’s rape. Ryan then gets a series of scheduled, cheeky and triumphant texts from Cassie, ending with a winky-face.