• ⇤
• ⇽
• ≡
• ⇾
• ⇥

movie review - A Promising Young Woman

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a movie about a guilty survivor of a horrific incident at a university in which a fellow female student is filmed while being raped to death. The survivor can't move past it and spends the movie on an unlikely revenge plot that she seems to know will consume her.

The title appears to be taken from comments by various judges while finding some Promising Young Man not guilty of rape. It cuts fine indeed, with not only the actual victim but her doomed friend having failed to complete their medical programs.

It's a difficult watch, in equal parts because of the subject matter but also because of its somewhat soft-ball handling. You can feel the thing slipping away into a lighter fare just as the stakes start getting serious, and I wonder if the creators didn't have trouble making something watchable. It gets some things right but on the whole I didn't find the ending worth the investment.

Not recommended.