By Charlotte Curle

CW: This blog post contains major spoilers and discussions of sexual violence

As a survivor of gender-based violence, I’ve always been drawn to films that aim to tackle this social issue.  On a societal level, there is still little understanding of how the culture we live in and systemic inequalities manifest into violence towards certain bodies. The #metoo movement undoubtedly increased awareness of the prevalence of gender-based violence. The film Promising Young Woman (2020) goes a step further and delves deeper into the nuances of this social issue, which can easily be lost in social media soundbites. When creating a film about gender-based violence, there’s always a danger of relying on gratuitous imagery and caricature-like stereotypes to tell the grizzly tale of ‘innocent’ women oppressed by their ‘evil’ male counterparts. Promising Young Woman stands out because it largely refuses to rely on these tropes. Instead, it draws attention to the insidious and imbalanced power dynamics in the world of Cassie (the protagonist), honing in on their emotional and physical consequences.

Cassie spends her evenings pretending to be intoxicated so that men will take advantage of her, before revealing her sober state to force them to confront their problematic behaviour. The audience learns that her friend Nina was sexually assaulted and, after her rapist was acquitted, took her own life. Cassie is complex and her motivations put her at odds with the ‘perfect victim’ stereotype (although Nina too is arguably constructed in this way at times). Likewise, the perpetrators of violence don’t immediately present as ‘predators’ – according to The Ringer (2021), the actors cast in these roles were intentionally chosen as they were known for playing wholesome, lovable ‘nice guys’. We also see those who protect perpetrators, who are presented as complicit with the violence that occurs in the film. This helps the audience to understand how people and institutions can help to perpetuate violence, whether intentionally or not. 

The film often focuses on the reactions and perspectives of those impacted by violence, using close-ups and point-of-view shots. For example, in the scene where Cassie watches the video of Nina being assaulted, the camera stays fixed on her face rather than showing us the content of the video. When we hear the voice of Ryan, Cassie’s boyfriend, on the tape, we see her shake and take a sharp intake of breath. As a viewer, I experienced the same physical reaction to this revelation as Cassie. This visceral way of evoking emotion is a powerful method of enabling the viewer to directly feel the impact of gender-based violence, which extends beyond the direct victim in individual incidents. Sara Ahmed says ‘to be traumatised is to hold a history in a body; you can easily be shattered’. We witness Cassie being shattered and we are shattered with her, both in disbelief that this could happen but at the same time surprised that we didn’t see it coming given what we know. When Cassie goes to the house where Al Munroe’s bachelor party is being held to punish him for raping Nina he cries. He tells Cassie that getting accused is “every guy’s worst nightmare”. She replies, “can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is?” The film helps the viewer to understand what it feels like for women to carry this nightmare around with them, whether they’ve directly experienced gender-based violence or not.

Promising Young Woman exposes the often-invisible societal norms and structures that enable gender-based violence to occur. Cassie’s behaviour throughout the film causes multiple people to tell her she’s crazy, to which she responds at one point “I honestly don’t think I am”. To Cassie, she is the only one who is seeing things clearly and, by reacting logically, she is constructed by the other characters as a problem so that they can deny their participation in upholding the norms and structures that enable abuse. Cassie becomes what Sara Ahmed has termed the ‘feminist killjoy’. However, the film arguably suffers from a lack of diversity which makes a truly intersectional analysis of the issue of gender-based violence impossible. The film is clearly designed to represent and critique white middle-class society, evidenced further by its sustained focus on suburbia as a location.

The film has been accused of being heavy-handed in its approach, with its lack of subtlety clear from the opening credits. However, perhaps this method is integral to the film’s central message; as a society, we have failed to recognize and understand gender-based violence until we’ve been forced to confront it in uncomfortable, impossible-to-ignore ways. The film ends with Cassie being murdered by Al-Monroe and, after she leaves a paper trail for law enforcement, they arrest him at his wedding in a dramatic fashion whilst Cassie messages Ryan from the grave using pre-scheduled delivery. It’s telling that according to the director, the original intended ending did not include this final scene but instead culminated with the disposal of Cassie’s body. The fact that the director was talked out of this bleak final frame by her financial backers suggests that audiences maybe weren’t quite ready to be confronted that violently yet and still require a bit of handholding when it comes to this topic. Still, it’s debatable whether justice is truly delivered in the end when multiple characters involved in participating and covering up Nina’s assault presumably walk away scot-free and the problematic societal structures in the film remain unchanged, despite Cassie’s persistent challenges to them.

The deaths of Nina and eventually Cassie demonstrate what happens when individuals are blind to the inequalities that perpetuate gender-based violence. They also show the power imbalances that exist and the limitations of victims’ ability to challenge violence in the structures that continually oppress them. The film is telling the audience to wake up and take action or expect to face brutal consequences. It also perhaps even more crucially sends a message of validation to women who have experienced the effects of gender-based violence; it’s the society you’re living in that’s crazy – not you. Cinema may not always provide us with the solutions to solve social issues, but this film demonstrates how it can give us a deeper understanding of societal problems, which is critical to being able to tackle them effectively.

Charlotte Curle is an incoming doctoral student at Lancaster University in Media and Cultural Studies and also am currently sitting on Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Gender-Based Violence Board.