This article includes spoilers about the ending of Promising Young Woman from the start...
It's an unusual reaction for me to see a female character killed off in a brutal and visceral way and say, out loud, 'I'm glad she did that'. But that's what I did, in the moment, in relation to the choice writer and director Emerald Fennell (who won for best original screenplay at the Oscars) made in showing main character Cassie smothered to death towards the end of Promising Young Woman.
After seeing Cassie 'trot along' to enact a much-anticipated revenge plot on the man who raped her best friend, Nina, it was crushing to see her overpowered and ultimately become victim to male violence and the sex's over-riding physical strength.
But still, the brutality makes sense to so many women. While others, have kicked-back against the decision to kill Cassie and the intense nature of the scene itself.
To me, to the narrative decision to murder Cassie made sense in many ways. It clearly showed the threat of male strength as something real that women (even those sociopathically intent on revenge) have to fear daily. This film didn't take place in the same universe as Superwoman or Harley Quinn - it took place in a real world where squaring up to a man and shouting some feminism 101 in their face probably doesn't end well for a woman. It lives in the world where 97% of women say they have been sexually assaulted. In fact if anything, when you see her flick through her tallied book, it occurs to most women watching, I think, that it's a wonder Cassie has made it this far. Though as some have pointed out, maybe that's what her colour-coded 'red' marks could signal.
The brutal, long sequence is specifically so. Fennell has said her ex-policeman father-in-law told her how long it would take to suffocate someone. And in seeing the way Al cries and bargains, screaming that this is Cassie's fault and then his cowardly demeanour after he's enacted his will (not to even start on the similarly allowing language of his friend Joe), it of course echoes society's wider prejudices against victims of sexual violence. You shouldn't have come here. You've made me do this. You've brought this on yourself. Your actions are to blame.
And as in life, the film showed there's no real 'happy ending' and ultimate resolution for many women who are violated (or whose lives are impacted by the violation of those close to them) by rape and violence. It'd be nice to think every woman has their day in court, proudly standing on the steps Law & Order style, knowing the bad guy had been put away. But with rape convictions standing at around two per cent in this country, I think that would've been galling and insulting to the women drawn to this film.
In some ways, the 'second ending' of the film, where police swoop in on Al's wedding to arrest him (and you're left hoping justice could come later for the other men in the film) was a blow to me in that sense. While I appreciated that some viewers might have needed the closure it gave, in some ways I wish we'd seen Al happily waltz off and cheers with his buddies. It's what's happening every day. And it's what they'd got away with for years. It would've left that stomach-churning rage of unfairness still burning in the stomach - that burning I get when I read about rape conviction statistics, or see headlines about domestic violence victims murdered by 'upstanding members of the community'. The world is mostly unfair to women who've suffered the worst of society - they rarely have their moment of revenge.
It's certainly no 'happy' ending though of course - Cassie and Nina are still dead, if you ended punching the air, the idea that justice has been served is way off. Justice would've been a conviction and the lives of 'promising young men' being cut off, not Nina and Cassie's. Ultimate fairness would've been such an attack never taking place.
And perhaps there's something to be said in it all being made possible by Cassie's realisation that in heading into that all-male environment, she needed a back-up plan. She needed to sit and send texts timed for what she knew would likely be her death. There's a mirror there with those of us who've walked home with keys clutched between fists, or called fake boyfriends in the back of dodgy taxis with an ETA - like Cassie, few women operate without constant back-up plans. And that's not even when we carry out revenge plots, that's just a Tuesday night out.
Emerald Fennell on the ending of Promising Young Woman
Emerald Fennell has herself explained the ending ofPromising Young Womanand the decisions she's made. [And can we take a moment's diversion here for how often male writers and directors are called on to explain themselves and the decisions they make in their art?] She has said she wrote an alternative ending where Cassie carved the name 'Nina' into Al's chest and cut off his penis.
But, she's said, she couldn't let that be how Promising Young Women ends.
'Once she was in that room, once a weapon is introduced between a man and a woman, it just didn't seem possible that it would go any other way,' she told Refinery29. 'It just seemed too easy to say that she would carve Nina’s name into his body and cut his dick off, and then walk out of the cabin in slow motion smoking a cigarette. I wish she could because I wish all of us could. But it's just not true.'
She added: 'It’s not a nice ending, but [this] isn't nice. This movie is partly an expression of how steep the mountain is, and how boring the climb is, how arduous, and how much easier it would be to just not to just turn around and go back to flat ground.'
Justifying the length and brutality of Cassie's death, she also said: 'We’re used to seeing violence against women treated in such a public way, but when you see what it really looks like it's distasteful. It should be distasteful. The whole point of doing it in real time and pushing in and getting closer was that you shouldn't be able to dismiss or look away from it.'
Criticism of the ending of Promising Young Woman
There's been criticism too, though, of the ending of Promising Young Woman. People have objected to the brutal death of Cassie being shown so strongly and said the film's portrayal of violence against women is a mixed bag.
One of the most famous objections to the film was written by Ayesha Saddiqion Substack, a piece that has gone viral with support.
In resisting revenge fully, Ayesha argues that 'the film offers no thrills. What it does do is punish women, absolve men, and let the cops handle the rest' and points out that two main acts of retribution take place against women - Dean Walker and her daughter and Alison Brie's Madison.
She also concludes that the film steps away from being a revenge fantasy film as it's seemingly billed: 'Iwanted to see men die, which is what the trailer teased, and why I’d been eagerly anticipating the film long before its release. Instead, I had to watch a woman be slowly, torturously killed, after wasting her time (and mine).'
The piece itself is fascinating and I'd urge anyone who's watched the film to read the full and complex piece.
Because while I don't believe Emerald Fennell's artistic choices specifically in Promising Young Woman should be called into question and queried any more than other films just because she's a woman and the subject matter is so complex (we need to encourage more stories and viewpoints, not less and singular ones, surely?) it is important that when we talk about violence against women and the female experience, we interrogate and open up discussions.
During the film, Cassie tells Dean Walker: 'I guess you just had to think about it in the right way.' And in many ways, Cassie's actions are often less akin to revenge and closer to constantly trying to reframe a narrative for people, in a desperate (but seemingly impossible) bid to make them understand what she (and Nina) has experienced. To feel the pain, to understand and wrap their heads around what she knows to be true, in the face of corrupt systems and bullying lawyers and rich frat boys.
The most brutal blow for me in watching Cassie's death and the reactions of Al, Joe, Ryan... Cassie's own father, was that her screaming pain still wasn't heard (before police swooped in, probably after too - who can see those men casting their thoughts inwards even in a jail cell?). Every woman knows that feeling of screaming for understanding that isn't met. Cassie still couldn't get Al to see his wrongs even as he murdered her. And who knows what a wealthy lawyer would ultimately be able to do with the murder charge the film leaves in the balance.
So, let's not be that way, let's try and see the different points of view and hear the stories and take other people's arguments into consideration - erasure only comes with silence, not discussion.
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