Carey Mulligan takes revenge against the “Nice Guys” of the world in the trailer for the upcoming thriller, Promising Young Woman. The film marks the feature directing debut for actor-writer Emerald Fennell, following her stint as showrunner on Killing Eve season 2. And much like that series, Fennell’s new movie (which she also wrote) follows the exploits of a blonde antiheroine who leads a twisted double-life. In this case, however, she’s not trotting around the globe as an assassin, but dispensing punishment to bad men who deserve it as an unconventional vigilante of sorts.
Mulligan stars in Promising Young Woman as Cassie, a woman who had a promising career ahead of her until a mysterious event sent her future off the rails and led her down a very different path (to put it mildly). The movie is slated to open in theaters in mid-April next year, but will make its premiere at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival a few months ahead of then. As such, Focus Features has elected to get its official marketing up and going this week.
The Promising Young Woman trailer is now online and will begin screening in theaters this weekend (most likely attached to Bombshell). You can check it out in the space below.
There’s a noticeable amount of overlap between Killing Eve and the Promising Young Woman footage, as far as their sense of atmosphere and style goes. Cassie, like Villanelle from Killing Eve, has an eye for colorful fashion and knows how to use her appearance to allure her would-be assailants into a false sense of security, only to turn around and expose them for who they really are. The trailer heavily implies her career was derailed when she was sexually assaulted during her time in medical school, only for her classmates like Madison (Alison Brie) and Dean Walker (Connie Britton) to express doubt about her claims and refuse to punish the person responsible, lest they have to deal with the blowback. The film’s synopsis teases an “unexpected encounter” gives Cassie a chance to “right the wrongs of the past”, though it remains to be seen just what that is.
Stories involving sexual assault and revenge are inherently at risk of coming off as exploitive or pseudo-empowering, but Promising Young Woman appears to take a fairly subversive and clever approach to the sub-genre. The trailer suggests it not only has something to say about the lie that is the “Nice Guy”, but also how women can be complicit in covering up sexual assault by refusing to take the victims’ claims seriously or dismissing them when it doesn’t serve their own interests (not to mention, the psychological effects that has on the victim). With Sundance just around the corner, it won’t be long before the early reviews arrive and paint a clearer picture of what to expect - good or bad - from Promising Young Woman.
Source: Focus Features
