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Promising Young Woman

Started by zomgmouse, January 25, 2021, 01:34:43 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

holyzombiejesus

What was with the Night of the Hunter clip and song?

Also, someone up thread mentioned that the men who took her home just got a ticking off. In the book where she wrote their names, weren't some names written in read and some in black? Not sure if that has any relevance but seems strange to have that if it wasn't significant. Having said that, the film is so lacking in any peril that her actually hurting someone would be totally out of step. She was just going to tattoo the guy at the end wasn't she?

Dr Rock

I can imagine three or four different types of outcomes that she might use different colour pens for. The ones we saw, where she scares the shit out or the guy just as he's about to rape her, ones where she had to put up a fight and maybe sustained injuries, and ones where the guy actually insisted on driving her home or let her sleep unmolested. And maybe ones that had to be aborted for some reason.

But at that point of the film we would probably imagine they had different meanings, like 'cut his cock off.'

phantom_power

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on April 19, 2021, 10:35:05 PM
What was with the Night of the Hunter clip and song?

Also, someone up thread mentioned that the men who took her home just got a ticking off. In the book where she wrote their names, weren't some names written in read and some in black? Not sure if that has any relevance but seems strange to have that if it wasn't significant. Having said that, the film is so lacking in any peril that her actually hurting someone would be totally out of step. She was just going to tattoo the guy at the end wasn't she?

She was going to carve her friend's name in his leg, which is a bit more than a tattoo.

I am surprised that so many people are disappointed that this isn't another revenge fantasy where the anti-hero goes on a killing spree

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: phantom_power on April 20, 2021, 09:02:07 AM
I am surprised that so many people are disappointed that this isn't another revenge fantasy where the anti-hero goes on a killing spree

Ah, I heard her talk about not letting him forget her name (or something) but didn;t clearly see what was in her hand.

I wasn't disappointed that it wasn't some kind of Dirty Weekend but felt that the rather tame comeuppance dished out to the would-be rapists meant that the film lacked anything particularly gripping. I enjoyed it but found it relatively slight.

peanutbutter

Watched the first half of this without my subwoofer plugged in. Think it'd be a bit unfair to criticise it too much but it definitely seemed to rely on a constant bassy hum to cover up for pretty basic direction in a film that needed more.

Bo Burnham was an inspired casting choice but
Spoiler alert
the heel turn was too heavy handed imo, a more arrogant but less spiteful "if you could just move on you could still be a successful doctor like me" type response seemed more fitting the character
[close]

Spoiler alert
Allison Brie's character made no sense at all to me.
I don't get why we were supposed to just take Alfred Molina's character at face value.
Have no clue where to even start with the ending.
[close]


Things I found disorienting:
Spoiler alert
The timespan: how much time did it cover? It seemed to be covering only a few days but then stuff like the Paris Hilton montage could've been a few months packed into one? If it were more than a few days there's surely no way she'd've gotten away with what she done with the dean?
[close]
Spoiler alert
The titles at sections: what exactly was being checked  off? Were they deliberately styled like roman numerals to make it seem like they were acts? I was assuming it had something to do with the names she had in the list as opposed to her big pile of checkmarks, was that meant to be confusing?
[close]


I think it could've worked if the writer/director had someone else direct instead and then they could've at least bounced ideas off each other a bit.

popcorn

I realise this is an incendiary thing to say but I think this might be the most overrated film I've ever seen. I've never experienced such a personal chasm between the reviews and awards and coverage I'm seeing and my perception of a film. It feels like my social media channels are full of 5-star reviews talking about how "whip-smart" this film is and how "it's the film we need right now" etc and to me it's so transparently basic and airheaded - bloodless (in every sense). It's starting to do my head in. It's irrational and unfair - I think for the most part critics are overwhelmingly sincere in their opinions - but I read a sense of desperation into every positive review. Imagine being a male critic and attacking this film in a public arena.

El Unicornio, mang

I've just realised that the director/writer is the same woman, Emerald Fennell, who plays Camilla Parker-Bowles in The Crown


popcorn

yes and whenever I hear her interviewed on the radio/podcast/film show/whatever I can't help but do a silly voice and go "OOH I'M A BIG POSHO AND I'VE MADE A RUBBISH FILM EVERYONE SAYS IS GREAT OOOH"

:--(

Been thinking back to how much I simultaneously loved it and was really annoyed by it and I think the problem is that it's a bad movie that's been brilliantly made. The cast are great, the cinematography stunning, there's a real sense of this being a story that really, really needs to be told at this point in time, but the script and plot are really not at the same level as everything else.

lipsink

The director also plays the YouTuber
Spoiler alert
giving the Blow Job Lips Tutorial.
[close]

peanutbutter

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on April 20, 2021, 01:00:07 PM
the cinematography stunning
When? I thought it was quite weak and failed to find a correct level of heightened reality. Which is most likely more down a lack of solid direction than the cinematographer specifically, but visually it had nothing impressive imo.

wooders1978

Quote from: popcorn on March 06, 2021, 03:42:21 PM
Thought this was fairly bad. Naff, shallow, smug, toothless. The characters are so thin - here's Carey hanging out in her coffee shop, dissing customers and chatting with her cool sassy romcom boss, hip, witty exchanges you can write yourself in your head - mega cringe.

SPONGLERS BELOW

Badly edited - some noticeable continuity fuckups and so on, and what's with that midsection montage that goes on 80% longer that i needs to?

I was disappointed that, as someone else said, she doesn't actually fuck anyone up - she just gives them a telling off. If she actually was a serial killer-torture-revenge person, it would have made the whole revenge genre flick pastiche work - instead it's just... mucking around.

I found her lectures sort of embarrassing. Like, one of the would-be rapists says, "I thought we had a connection!" and she says "Oh yeah? What's my job? Do you even know my name?" and the guy is flabbergasted like damn, she's got him there. But I couldn't help but think: "Come on. That isn't what he meant. He meant in the bar earlier they had some chemistry, they were flirting, that's a connection." (I understand that isn't what happened because whole routine is that she's too drunk for any of that sort of thing to happen, and she never reciprocates anything - but like much of the film it felt too easy somehow, too straightforward, too dumb.)

I liked that she set Alison Brie up for a revenge rape, as it embraces the nastiness of the genre concept and made her much more complex and contradictory - but it turns out that didn't happen either, not because Carey is a Paul Bateman fantasist but because she's simply, boringly, above reproach. It would also have raised the stakes for the final confrontation at the bachelor party, because we'd have known what she was capable of.

I thought the ending was going to be more interesting than it was - like, ha, she just failed, the cops don't care because she was a slut and the patriarchy wins, what an ending, a big meta punchline. But that didn't happen, oh well.

As far as hip contemporary films addressing similar themes goes, it was way less effective or interesting than Under the Skin or I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Radically different films but they express some related sentiments with far more ingenuity and creativity and make much bolder statements.

Spot on poppers - the film rescues itself a bit in the final 3rd, then blows it again at the end

One thing I did like though was that Paris Hilton song?! - who knew, absolute jam and she's got a really good pop voice, assuming it's hers...

lipsink

The Paris Hilton song seems quite apt too as she and the misogynist abuse she faced back in the day has had a bit of a reappraisal recently.

up_the_hampipe

Quote from: lipsink on April 20, 2021, 10:27:55 PM
The Paris Hilton song seems quite apt too as she and the misogynist abuse she faced back in the day has had a bit of a reappraisal recently.

They should have used a Britney song. Paris Hilton does not deserve a reappraisal.

Dr Rock

Quote from: peanutbutter on April 20, 2021, 06:18:44 PM
When? I thought it was quite weak and failed to find a correct level of heightened reality.

It wasn't going for heightened reality. it was going for 'jarring'

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: up_the_hampipe on April 21, 2021, 12:07:12 AM
They should have used a Britney song. Paris Hilton does not deserve a reappraisal.

They did. For a second I thought the version of Toxic they used was some unused Mica Levi piece from Under The Skin.

Head Gardener

I like how Carey gets changed and wears lovely clothes in nearly every scene, and so does my wife

popcorn

Regarding the fact that Carey doesn't kill anyone in the film - the objection isn't so much "wah wah this isn't like other films", so much as it would have been much more effective if she had.

I keep thinking about that intro, with her doing the "walk of shame" covered in ketchup. If she'd been doing the walk of shame after a night on the town murdering rapists, that would have been a great, funny scene, a repurposing of a cultural trope in a sharp new context. But instead it's "ho ho - you thought it was going to be blood but actually it's ketchup and she's eating a hot dog". Why? What's the gag there? "Prepare yourself for a world of disappointment?"

The other movie wasn't called Arrest Bill, was it? Again, I know this sets me up for a world of "it doesn't have to be like other films", but I don't understand why Promising Young Woman wears the clothes of a violent revenge film without actually containing any violent revenge, because it's not witty enough to be subversive and not stylised enough to be interesting without. The only point it seems to make, in avoiding the violence, is to shrug and defer all responsibility to the authorities.

wooders1978

Quote from: Head Gardener on April 21, 2021, 10:12:53 AM
I like how Carey gets changed and wears lovely clothes in nearly every scene, and so does my wife

Who'd she play?

Head Gardener



Head Gardener

Quote from: wooders1978 on April 21, 2021, 03:32:35 PM
Your wife wears lovely clothes in every scene?

ah no, she just admired the clothes she wasn't in the film she just wants the pretty dresses

checkoutgirl

Quote from: Huxleys Babkins on March 30, 2021, 04:27:14 PM
"If I wanted a boyfriend, and a yoga class, and a house, and kids, and a job my mom could brag about, I'd have done it. It would take me 10 minutes. I don't want it"

God yeah, terrible.

Dusty Substance

Watched it couple of nights ago and thought it was OK, if a little heavy handed with the preachy message.

Having since watched/read a few reviews of the film, it seems I might have had more appreciation for the film if I was more versed in the aesthetic of rom coms from the last 10-15 years and some of the casting choices (apparently, some of the men are known for playing a certain type in American sitcoms - I guess it would be akin to seeing Martin Clunes and Neil Morrissey in a 90s rape/revenge drama).

The muddled tone came across like an attempt to be like Serial Mom or Heathers, but nothing like as good as either.

Due to the nature of the way films are made, it was presumably pitched and green lit in 2018 during the height of hashtag me too, made in 2019 and then released last year, by which time me too wasn't quite as zeitgeisty as it was.

Far from being amazing or a masterpiece, it's a decent enough directorial debut which may well be "film of the week" right now, but unless it wins an Oscar or two (screenplay and actress?)  nobody will be talking about it in a year's time and it's highly unlikely to appear on any end of year lists.


EOLAN

Quote from: Dusty Substance on April 22, 2021, 01:48:41 PM


Far from being amazing or a masterpiece, it's a decent enough directorial debut which may well be "film of the week" right now, but unless it wins an Oscar or two (screenplay and actress?)  nobody will be talking about it in a year's time and it's highly unlikely to appear on any end of year lists.

Been the top film of 2020 on a few podcasts I listen to. Maybe it has a certain appeal to East Coast American male sports fans.

BritishHobo

I really liked it. I get where people are coming from with the desire for some actual bloody revenge, but I suppose that's the choice - it's firmly rooted in the world where women barely scrape by with a few shreds of justice, if they're lucky. It would have undermined what they were going for if she was able to be this cool vigilante slicing up dudes and getting away with it.

Also I think killing the men wouldn't provide the same kind of comeuppance. There's no culpabity in the men being dead. By doing what she does, it forces the men in a position where their wrongdoing is unavoidable. She doesn't cede an inch of moral highground. In getting angry at her deception, they reveal their own actions, because there's no other way around it. The only reason to be angry at her for lying about her is because they were consciously taking advantage. I love that she always gave multiple 'outs', for example telling Christopher Mintz-Plasse several times that she wanted a taxi home. Once she reveals herself, you see a fear in them of what they're having to admit in black-and-white about their own actions. You wouldn't get that catharsis if they just got stabbed up.

I read a neat point on Twitter which definitely applied to me - there were a couple of times where Bo Burnham says things that you forgive as knowing irony - like jokingly calling her a bitch - because you're buying into him as a nice guy who understands the struggle.

popcorn

Presenter standing in for Kermode on the review podcast just announced that she has launched an entire podcast about this film.

NOT happy about this.

falafel

Not sure about the bloodlust on display in this thread. There are plenty of cathartic revenge fantasies out there you can watch. This was far bleaker, at least in the way I experienced it, and more interesting for it. It's someone
Spoiler alert
so disempowered and scarred that ultimately they destroy themselves in the name of justice. It's a quintessential pyrrhic victory. It's cathartic for about a millisecond, but ultimately it hinges on the protagonist being smothered slowly and brutally by a smug jock rapist.

A couple of other things -
-Ketchup leg, thought that was a good early hint that this wasn't in fact going to be *that* film
-Of course she didn't arrange for someone to be raped! Fucking hell. In the film I was watching that was just not a possibility - another deliberately telegraphed red herring like the ketchup. I mean, wouldn't it have been simultaneously obvious and nihilistic? A proper shrug.

Again, why are a few people seemingly so annoyed that it's not a proper revenge fantasy? They're great and all but isn't it OK if this isn't one? Is outrageous violence the only way to deal with this subject? The film kicks around a lot of the tropes but to me it's the opposite of what's going on, pointedly so. I just see a lot of talking about the film that it isn't, not the film that it is, if you catch my drift.

Cassie didn't win, or get revenge. She lost, catastrophically. It's not 'victory, but at what cost'; it's someone who's lost her will to live sacrificing herself to right a wrong, but she doesn't get to see the outcome because she was turned into a bonfire and clearly everyone at that wedding is going to be miserable, traumatised or in prison for the foreseeable future. Everybody fucking loses!

You can see that as a failure, I suppose. But those points that keep being raised as fuckups and weak spots, divergences or evidence of cowardice, I tended to read in the moment as being quite pointed and intentional. So many of those moments that have wound people up were ones where I was actually relieved it didn't go the other way.
[close]

Basically, popcorn talking about this film sounds like me taking about Babel. Don't get me started on Babel.

falafel

Quote from: Prison Biscuits on March 30, 2021, 01:59:36 PM
Back to the topic, just gonna entrust my contingency plan from beyond the grave to this unstable stranger who just had a psychotic break to follow my instructions, call the police, get them out to this wedding immediately, all their best officers, two detectives right on the case of this woman who's been missing for like a day. They'll know who to arrest. Tell them to look for a pile of smoking ash. Letter ends "please also can you send three text messages to my ex boyfriend right at the point when the police are arresting his mate, that would be a proper gotcha lol, cheers xxx, cassie the friendly ghost".

man in cinema shouts COME ON THAT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN

falafel

Quote from: popcorn on April 02, 2021, 11:22:29 PM
Don't think so, it was a backup plan.

Honestly as if we were watching a different film! Not a criticism. I love it when this happens.