There is no actual connection between Emerald Fennell last acting role to a her writing/directing debut but it’s worth mentioning. After playing Prince Charles long suffering mistress Camilla Parker-Bowles in The Crown,, Fennell is now responsible for creating Promising Young Woman an excellent revenge thriller that is determined to exact punishment on nearly all men.. We wonder how that would screen at Highgrove?
Whatever the real reasons are for Fennell creating this powerful new film right now are, there is no doubt it was intended as a star vehicle of Carey Mulligan who gives a career best performance.
Mulligan plays Cassie Thomas, a 29-year-old-turning-30 medical school drop out who works in a coffee shop with her friend Gail (Laverne Cox) by day. At night, Cassie goes out to local clubs and pretends to be so drunk she can’t walk. When, inevitably, a nice guy offers to see her home safely, only to take her back to their place and try to have sex with her despite her outward inebriated state, she drops the act.
These men are not particular connected with her problematic past, but Cassie thinks that all men who try to take advantage of any vulnerable women need to be taught a lesson.
Fennell takes her time revealing Cassie’s real reasons for her double life and why she dropped out of med school. Nothing is easy to predict in this tale and even when old classmate Ryan (Bo Burnham) comes into the coffee shop one day and asks Cassie out, we are so unsure why she says yes.
It turns out that she thinks he can play a part in her getting revenge on the people who derailed her life, and ended that of her very best friend.
