Promising Young Woman (4 Stars)

Cassie is 30 years old and works in a coffee shop. She lives with her parents and has never had a boyfriend. By all accounts she's a failure in life. And yet, she used to go to a medical school. She was one of the best students, but she dropped out after two years. What happened to her?

It's all because of her best friend Nina. They grew up together, they went to school together, and they went to college together. One evening she got drunk at a party, and she was raped by one of their fellow students. Nobody believed her story. There were other party guests who saw everything, presumably all male, and they kept quiet. She dropped out of college and died a short time later, presumably suicide.

You'll notice that I've already used the word presumably twice. If I continued with a full plot summary I'd have to use the word many more times. There are lots of things that are hinted in the film, not explicitly stated. In the two cases above, it's easy to guess what happened. It's obvious. In later scenes it isn't so clear. That annoyed me.

But getting back to Cassie, what's she doing with her life? Every Friday she goes to a club and pretends to be drunk. She waits for a man to take her home. She keeps a log in her diary of whether the man takes advantage of her in her drunken state. She makes black and red marks in her diary, to show whether it was a good man or not. Presumably. If it's a bad man she reveals that she's still sober at the last moment.

By chance she finds out that Nina's rapist, now a successful doctor, is about to get married. She steps up her activities and prepares to take revenge on him and those closest to him.

I felt slightly disappointed after hearing all the praise heaped on the film. To me it seemed uneven. There are some very good scenes, whereas others are less convincing. Over the years she's gone to the houses of strange men, presumably hundreds of men, and nothing bad has ever happened to her. What are the chances of that? The film is an interesting new slant on rape'n'revenge thrillers, but its uniqueness is what makes it weaker.

"Promising Young Woman" has already been released on disc in Britain and America. Its cinema release in Germany has been delayed by the cinema lockdowns.

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