2020 drama, dir. Emerald Fennell, Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham:
IMDb /
allmovie. When she was
a medical student, her friend was raped, and killed herself after
nobody believed her. She's going to stop that happening again.
Rape and revenge, of course, has been done. But this film
manages to make it a bit more complex: for all that the trailers try
to make it look like an erotic thriller with a murderous heroine, it's
rather more subtle than that. What Cassie is doing is getting dolled
up, going out to a club, looking as though she's falling-down drunk,
waiting for a good samaritan to offer to take her home and instead
start trying to take advantage of her, and then put a scare into him.
(There's no shortage of these rapey good samaritans. I know "all men
are rapists" has become a cliché of feminism, but the point is still a
good one: as far as potential victims are concerned, any man could
suddenly reveal this tendency, so they always have to be on their
guard. I'm pretty sure that none of the men depicted here thinks of
himself as a rapist or as a witness to rape, because after all there
was no screaming and struggling. Is it a Message Film? No, it's a film
with a message.)
Even more interesting, to me, is the depiction of Cassie's own mental
state. She's dedicated everything to this quest for revenge, and she
doesn't realise just how much that was and how much it's continuing to
damage her. When an old friend shows up and seems interested in
starting a relationship, she goes for it; for me, the best sequence in
the film was a rom-com-style "doing fun stuff together" montage,
during which we the audience can see clearly how broken this person
is.
Because this is a story that cannot end well. Even if it were just a
quest to deal with the people involved in the original attack, even if
it all went perfectly, Cassie would still be the person who'd done
those things, and while she clearly thinks she could drop back into a
normal life we can see that this isn't the case. It's the best sort of
tragedy, the sort in which one desperately hopes that fate can be
turned aside… but it can't.
Withoout going into spoiler territory, Fennell (screnwriter as well as
director) originally planned to end the film at the bonfire scene, but
the producers interfered. I'm glad they did; the result is much
better, and more in keeping with the characters as we've come to know
them.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.
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