The One Oscar-Nominated Film We Can’t Stop Thinking About
When I launched myself as an entertainment journalist in the mid-1980s, it was clear where females stood in Hollywood. Below men. Nineteen-eighty-six’s big movies included Top Gun and Platoon: testosterone-heavy, action-heavy, male-cast-heavy films. In 1987 The Academy Awards recognised A Room With A View with eight nominations, but as a British film it was allowed to break Hollywood’s rules anyway. Children of a Lesser God might have made a star of deaf actress Marlee Matlin in the same year, but the movie would never have gotten bankrolled without its leading man William Hurt, who already had an Oscar under his belt.
By 1990, I was studying screenwriting in Los Angeles and working for a studio; there, someone told me it would be easier to crack into Hollywood if I was a guy. I was also told I had to write a movie with a male protagonist at its centre if I wanted a shot at selling it. Lethal Weapon, starring Mel Gibson, was the only kind of movie that anyone was talking about. Michelle Pfeiffer might have been a big star, but I was repeatedly told that she couldn’t “open” a movie, meaning that people would only buy tickets to see her if she had a reputable leading man opposite her. At that stage, one of her two Oscar nominations was for The Fabulous Baker Boys, the title of which should indicate who the movie was really about.
Cut to 2021. Yes, things have improved. But in terms of where the power lies, here’s an alarming statistic: this year is the first time in the Oscars’ history that more than one female director has gotten a nod for best director – and the Academy Awards have been going for nearly 100 years. Chloe Zhao (Nomadland) and Emerald Fennell (Promising Young Woman) are among the Best Director nominees and are only the sixth and seventh female directors to be nominated in history. Just one female director has won: Kathryn Bigelow in 2010, for The Hurt Locker.
I watched Promising Young Woman this week, which Emerald Fennell wrote and directed; you might have seen her playing Camilla Parker-Bowles in Netflix series The Crown. What I loved about the movie is that she takes notions of zeitgeist-y #MeToo and makes it thoroughly her own. Imagine if the face of #MeToo was a screwed-up college dropout (Carey Mulligan) hellbent on avenging all the terrible behaviour of men everywhere, and accessorising her cute outfits with a pinch of homicidal tendencies. It’s not for the faint-hearted. In one scene – spoiler alert – the anti-heroine sets out to carve a rape victim’s name in the attacker’s chest.
Carey Mulligan (top and above, left), Bo Burnham, who plays Ryan in Promising Young Woman, and writer-director Emerald Fennell.
“What Promising Young Woman does best is start a conversation. It’s about the leering fellows who wolf-whistle on streets as women walk by, who road rage behind the shields of their car windows and their masculinity.”
The last female revenge film I remember getting nominated for so many Oscars was Fatal Attraction, nearly 35 years ago. In that movie, the guy doesn’t behave too well either – Michael Douglas cheats on his wife. But when Glenn Close’s character, his lover, seeks retribution, she is portrayed as unhinged, crazy, demented. Douglas becomes the movie’s hero, so much so that director Adrian Lyne had to change the original ending, which had Close kill herself and implicate Douglas in her death. (In the ending that aired, Douglas’ wife, played by Anne Archer, shoots her nemesis.) Trust me, no one is cheering for the men in Promising Young Woman.
Fennell’s movie has been called “the most audacious, feminist movie of the year” (Variety), but what I like is that it is uncompromising in its view, yet nuanced enough to show shades of grey everywhere.
In broad strokes, the movie follows what happens after Nina, a promising medical student who is raped while drunk, drops out of college and commits suicide. Her best friend Cassie, played by Mulligan, makes it her raison d’etre not just to punish the perpetrator, but to teach a lesson to every man who has ever blurred the lines of consent, covered up for their mates, or treated women as lesser. Cassie shows everyone’s flawed thinking, even (especially) that of other women’s, some of whom turn a blind eye or help clean up male messes. And Cassie is also flawed; she’s spiralling out of control and sometimes seems on shaky moral ground herself.
What Promising Young Woman does best is start a conversation. It’s not just about the men who act criminally. It’s about the leering fellows who wolf-whistle on streets as women walk by, who road rage behind the shields of their car windows and their masculinity. It’s not just about the guys that realise there’s no consent and say screw it (literally), anyway – it’s about their friends who forgive them because they thought they were too stupid and young to know better.
If Fennell makes history this year – she’s the first British female director ever to have been nominated – it’s sweetened by the fact that she’s not only deserving, but so appealingly normal. When The New York Times asked her what she did before the nominations were announced, she replied, “I think I did what any sensible person would do: I watched about six hours of Married At First Sight Australia to take my mind off it.”
But she also told film critic Roger Ebert, when asked what kind of movie she wanted to make, “I can only make something that feels like the kind of conversation that I would have with my friends, where there are not necessarily answers, where sometimes you’re just talking, you’re just thinking. That’s the thing.”
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Words_ Rachelle Unreich
Images_ Supplied