Promising Young Woman: Beware her wrath

Promising Young Woman (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated R, for violence, sexual assault, sexual candor, drug use and relentless profanity

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.26.21

If revenge is a dish best served cold, then Carey Mulligan’s Cassie Thomas leaves dry ice in her wake.

 

Cassie (Carey Mulligan) still hasn't quite decided how to handle Ryan (Bo Burnham),
but there's no denying his ability to have spontaneous fun in an unlikely setting.

Cunning, calculating and crafty as if borne to treachery, Mulligan’s Academy Award-nominated performance is a marvelous display of graceful subtlety: something at which she always has excelled. She’s both hero and anti-hero, drifting from one side of that fence to the other, enchanting us just as much as she (ultimately) terrorizes her victims.

 

All of which is delivered with ghoulish glee by Emerald Fennell, also Oscar-nominated for both directing and concocting this deviously nasty dark-dark-dark comedy. It’s available via Amazon Prime and other streaming services.

 

We meet Cassie under lamentable circumstances: dressed to kill but just this side of dangerously intoxicated, makeup askew and swaying slowly while trying to remain upright on the sofa in a trendy bar. Easy prey for a trio of good-looking guys on the make (Adam Brody, Ray Nicholson and Sam Richardson).

 

One — seemingly the “compassionate fellow” — separates from the pack, solicitously asks if she’s all right, chuckles sympathetically at her efforts to sound coherent. Offers to take her home, brings her to his place instead. Laughs off her slurred, wavery protests. He gets increasingly, ah, fresh.

 

Benjamin Kracun’s camera rises above this scene, tightens focus on Cassie’s face. Her drowsy eyes abruptly snap into full awareness. 

 

And we think Uh-oh…

 

Returning home, Cassie withdraws a small notebook from a place of concealment, flips through pages and pages and pages of red and black hash marks, reaches the page in progress, and adds a vertical red line.

 

And we think Yikes!

 

Fennell’s Promising Young Woman is the ultimate #MeToo statement. It’s a righteously angry response to an appalling situation — campus rape — that has been ignored, concealed or denied for far too long. What’s most impressive is that Fennell refrains from preaching; despite the awfulness of what occurs here — and of what occurred years earlier — her film remains … well … entertaining. Amusing, even.

 

The Big Sick: Just what the doctor ordered!

The Big Sick (2017) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rated R, for profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 7.7.17

Stand-up comics have a significant advantage, when it comes to autobiographical projects; they’ve fine-tuned such material during years of comedy club appearances.

As their relationship blossoms, Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) and Emily (Zoe Kazan) spend
more and more time together, even as both continue to insist — with diminishing
conviction — that this "isn't anything serious."

The results can be terrific, as demonstrated by (for example) Nia Vardalos’ My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Billy Crystal’s 700 Sundays.

The Big Sick is a similarly delightful experience: by turns sweet, funny and poignant, with a gently instructive cross-cultural moral that we desperately need these days.

The film stars Pakistani-American actor/comedian Kumail Nanjiani, perhaps best recognized from his starring role on HBO’s Silicon Valley. He co-wrote The Big Sick with his wife, Emily V. Gordon; the film depicts their real-life courtship, which started when, as a grad student, she attended one of his stand-up appearances at a Chicago comedy club.

The relationship gets off to a shaky start. Although Kumail (playing himself) and Emily (Zoe Kazan) enjoy each other’s company, neither is looking for a relationship. She’s focused on finishing a master’s degree in couples and family counseling, in order to begin a career as a therapist; he’s enduring the grueling, grinding ordeal of trying to hone a stand-up set in front of frequently unforgiving audiences.

Then there’s the other issue. She’s a modern American white gal; he belongs to a conservative Muslim family, with parents — Azmat (Anupam Kher) and Sharmeen (Zenobia Shroff) — who expect him to enter into a traditional Pakistani arranged marriage. Like they did, and like his older brother Naveed (Adeel Akhtar) did, with his wife Fatima (Shenaz Treasury).

Kumail faithfully has dinner once a week with his family: chaotic affairs with (in his own words) “five different conversations going on, people talking over each other, and everyone’s very loud.” Which wouldn’t be so bad, except that Kumail’s mother always sets a sixth place at the table, in case an eligible young Pakistani woman “happens” to drop in. Which one always does.

Bearing a photo and résumé. Which Kumail dutifully takes back to his apartment, once dinner concludes, and tosses into a cigar box laden with similar profiles.

So yes, there’s a strong echo of Greek Wedding, albeit from a Pakistani perspective. But there’s also a significant difference, because Kumail can’t work up the courage to tell his parents about Emily (whereas she has shared everything about him with her folks). He’s paralyzed by anecdotes about adult children and other relations banished from their families, for similar “transgressions.”

Unfortunately, Kumail also doesn’t share his lack of candor with Emily: a nagging secret that eats at him, as their didn’t-want-a-relationship blossoms into a genuine love affair.

This can only end badly ... but Kumail can’t imagine how badly.