Promising Young Woman Parent Guide

Following a traumatic, extended series of incidents in university, Cassie (Carey Mulligan) dropped out of med school and got a job at a coffee shop. But that’s not the only thing she’s working on: Cassie spends her nights pretending to be black-out drunk in seedy bars. Her apparent vulnerability attracts some unsavory and lecherous men, at which point Cassie teaches them important lessons about sexual consent.

Cassie’s plans get more complicated when she meets a former classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham), at work and agrees to go on a few dates with him. From Ryan she learns that the man responsible for the problems she had in med school, Al Monroe (Chris Lowell), is back in town – and now Cassie must choose between exacting revenge and maintaining her new relationship.

Movies about sexual assault need to walk a fine line between being watchable and still showing the trauma of the crime. Promising Young Woman does a remarkable job toeing that line. Trauma is evident in spades, but this is a film with no nudity or graphic on-screen sexual behavior. It’s rare to see a film manage to have a candid discussion about sexual violence without putting nudity on screen. Emerald Fennell, who both wrote and directed this production deserves credit for the achievement.

That’s not to say there isn’t any content to be concerned about. Obviously, victims of sexual harassment will likely find large portions of this film upsetting at best, and potentially triggering at worst. There is still a great deal of graphic sexual conversation to make up for the lack of on-screen activity and a healthy helping of profanity to go with it. Add in some brief, but disturbing, instances of violence and this isn’t going to be a great choice for a family movie night with the kids.

Content concerns aside, the issues and morals raised in the film are important, and while they’re unsuitable for a younger audience, these are important conversations for us to have as a society. We’ve certainly done a lot to avoid them, and that has been a repulsive deferral of responsibility. Promising Young Woman does everything it can to force people to confront the realities of sexual harassment: it’s up to the audience to make the changes we need to not only the criminal justice system, but to society itself. When we teach women to protect themselves instead of teaching boys not to be rapists, we condone an insane amount of sexual violence. It’s up to us to stop it.