PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Trauma Driven Obsession
It’s Not Healing

Emerald Fennell’s brilliantly disturbing and evocative film, Promising Young Woman, shows us one troubling aftermath of trauma. And, it’s all because no one helped. Cassie lost her very best friend (and only true soulmate) to suicide. Why? Because Nina couldn’t go on after a violent and repeated gang rape that seriously traumatized her. And, no one listened. No one saw the rape as rape and no one blamed the rapist. Cassie can now think of nothing else but getting revenge for Nina’s rape and death. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Yes, Cassie, shows us just where trauma-driven obsession takes you. No, it’s not pretty or healing. In fact, Cassie’s obsession is another kind of suicide. Here’s why …

Don’t Ignore Trauma

When you’re ignored, it hurts you. It’s also enraging. We see how it affects Cassie (Carrie Mulligan).

Nina, Cassie’s best friend, was raped at a party in Med School by Al Monroe (Chris Lowell) a narcissistic fellow Med student, while other men watched, egged him on, making it sport, doing nothing to help. Cassie tried to get help for Nina. Everyone ignored her. Ryan was a part of it, too, Cassie soon discovers. How could he? Ryan’s the old friend, now-doctor (Bo Burnham), who she might otherwise have loved.

Rape is dehumanizing. It’s violating. It’s the ultimate in being ignored; as if the victim isn’t even a person. Plus, trying to get help for Nina isn’t the first time Cassie’s been ignored. Witness her oblivious mom (Jennifer Coolidge) and “well-meaning” dad (Clancy Brown). She’s known all too well what it’s like for people not to “get you.”

That is until she found Nina.

Losing the Only One Who “Gets You”

When you find someone who “gets you,” you don’t want to lose them. It’s that special connection that’s sometimes missing in childhood, one that Cassie had hungered for.

How can you possibly go on without the best part of yourself? The only person who made you feel real or alive or wanted? That’s what Nina was for Cassie.

Nina was everything Cassie never felt she was.

Yes, Nina was confident, Cassie’s not. Nina was a brilliant med student, always wanting to be a doctor. Cassie followed in her footsteps, to be with her, not knowing who she was.

Cassie’s lack of confidence made her not believe in herself. That, Nina, did for her.

Oh, Cassie’s smart, don’t make any mistake about it.  Not seeing yourself that way isn’t a good thing. But, now, Cassie will use her smarts to create lessons for all the men in the world who think women are their playthings. Cassie’s very good at that.

Promising Young Woman’s Obsession

An obsession means that you can’t get a particular idea out of your mind. Sometimes it torments you. Or, worries you. You might feel enraged or terrified. And, sometimes an obsessive idea pressures you to act on it. Then, it’s a compulsion too.

That’s what Cassie’s obsession with teaching men a lesson is all about. She’s cunning, conniving, and downright tricky. In fact, she knows just what will draw them in. You can make them think you are vulnerable prey; drunk, helpless, and very, very pretty. She’s got it down.

So, Cassie gets even seemingly “nice” men, to play knight in shining armor, and they invariably try to take advantage of her “intoxicated” state, of course. Then she moves in.

Suddenly, she’s stone-cold sober, since she was never drunk at all. She asks them, point-blank, what they think they’re doing. She’s so piercing and scary, they run for the hills.

There’s nothing else on Cassie’s mind. She gave up Medical school to take care of Nina. Nina killed herself. Now she’s on a mission of revenge. It’s the only use she has for men.

Well, maybe not entirely. She’s always been hungry for love and now Nina’s gone.

Love Could Help Cassie (But She Doesn’t Trust It)

Cassie doesn’t trust anyone, especially now, especially not men. And, love is no simple thing, even when Ryan, her old Medical School classmate, comes along.  He’s “nice” (it seems), funny, charming, a pediatric surgeon now, and he’s always liked her.

Yes, Cassie is distrusting, revenge-obsessed, but even she can be swayed (tricked?) into hope; hoping that there might be a man who’s different, who doesn’t just want to use her for sex.

When she’s drawn away from her late-night revenge-obsessed seductions and “lessons,” she and Ryan start falling in love. Witness the scene at a candy-colored pharmacy – where the two lovers sing and dance to Paris Hilton’s “Stars Are Blind.”

Well, love can be blind. But not for long with Cassie’s distrust always on high alert. And, when, while hunting down Al Monroe, she’s given a videotape of Nina’s rape, she discovers that Ryan was there – and didn’t step in to help. She immediately ends it.

For Cassie, there is nothing that’ll ever be forgivable about what happened to Nina.

Why Cassie Sacrifices Herself, at the End

Betrayed by love again (first by her parent’s sad ineptness), she’s even more bent on the vendetta that will make Al Monroe pay for what he did. There’s no question in her mind. Why should he get married, be a successful physician, and have the happiness he took away from her beloved Nina?

He won’t. Not if Cassie has a say. Even if it means dying herself. Cassie knows that if she invades his bachelor party, poses as the stripper; and confronts him for what he did, she might be killed herself.

But it’s worth it, right? And, for sure, her plan is airtight. Yes, Cassie’s smart. The sad thing is that this Promising Young Woman’s obsession uses her brilliance for revenge, not for personal success.

Cassie’s got it carefully mapped out; leaving clues about her whereabouts just in case she disappears. And, when she’s dead, a prescheduled text pops up on Ryan’s phone: “You didn’t think this was the end …? It is now. Enjoy the wedding! Love, Cassie & Nina.”

Her plot materializes, her burned body is found (burned by life and loss), and Al Monroe is arrested at his own wedding for her murder. Cassie’s obsession is a success! Or is it?

Maybe, in a twisted way, Cassie gets what she longs for, to be with Nina again.

But isn’t this the saddest ending Promising Young Woman could have? That Cassie never got enough, when it came to love and self-respect, to save her own life even if she couldn’t save Nina’s?

So, where did this lead her? Having to avenge her loss and prove the horrors of rape culture meant, in Cassie’s obsession, committing suicide herself.