Promising Young Woman

Recently nominated for 5 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, and a very well-deserved Best Actress nomination for Carey Mulligan, the electrifying Promising Young Woman is not the typical type of challenging indie fare one might see recognized by the Academy. The Independent Spirit Awards, sure, but this is the type of film traditionally conservative Oscar voters run away from!

The setup seems simple enough: a young woman, obviously struggling with some sort of past trauma, seeks out men at bars who are only too anxious to “help” an inebriated woman in need. But this ain’t no exploitation B-movie like Ms. 45 or I Spit on Your Grave. Instead of graphic and gratuitous violence, the violence on display here is far more psychological, leading to a defiant 3rd-act that serves as an absolute gut-punch and punchline, all in one.

Carey Mulligan, so great in films such as An Education, Shame and Suffragette, is at the top of her game here as Cassandra for we’re never really 100% certain of what she’s up to… until all is revealed in shocking fashion.

So why did the Academy respond so lovingly to this film? I think we can partly thank the pandemic.

Just look at this year’s Oscar nominations: Nomadland, Minari, PYW, Sound of Metal… all smaller films that in a typical blockbuster/Oscar-bait laden year, may not get noticed as much as the flashier, bigger-budgeted, relentlessly publicized major studio releases. With so many studios pushing back their prestige films until 2021 (and beyond), it opened the doors for a film like PYW to gain a lot more notice than it might have otherwise.

And as fans of quality film, at least that’s one small positive we can take from the train wreck that was 2020!

Promising Young Woman is now available on Blu-Ray and on-Demand.