"I wanted [the film] to feel like the world that I live in, in my mind."
Promising Young Woman is the brand new movie from The Crown star and director, Emerald Fennell. Starring Carey Mulligan, the film is a revenge thriller/comedy which touches on topics of rape, consent and suicide.
The movie has been nominated for five Oscars this year - Best Director, Best Actress, Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Editing.
Promising Young Woman stars Mulligan as Cassie, a woman who has a vendetta against men who take advantage of women. Ahead of the movie's release, we caught up with Mulligan and Fennell to chat about the film, the incredible ending, and the brilliant soundtrack.
Promising Young Woman follows Cassie as she gets revenge on men because of something that happened to her friend in college. As intense as the film can be at times, it's also very bright in the midst of it all.
Emerald Fennell, who recently played Camilla Shand in Netflix hit The Crown, says she wanted to have all elements of feelings included in the film, from happiness to sadness to love. Emerald explains: "Talking about any of this stuff is so hard. For me all of our lives are kind of this explosion of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and trauma and rage and love."
"I don't think women's lives are necessarily straight forward. So I wanted it to feel like the world that I live in, in my mind."
Orchestral versions of pop classics feature regularly in the film, with Hilton's Stars are Blind being one of the main songs from a particularly memorable moment.
Carey says she was already a fan of the song but had to spend time learning the lyrics for that one scene. "I didn't know every single lyric which was required, so they did print out the lyrics for us to learn as homework," she says. "I came out to LA a week before and was driving around LA listening to Paris Hilton."
"It's so wonderful to be able to borrow from these different places because I think falling in love does feel like that," Fennell goes on "It does feel like a montage, you feel completely insane, you feel like you're out of your normal world."
This film is a must see. The story is both sad and terrifying, but also humorous an fun. The ending is perfect, as Carey says: "It felt right, and it felt honest. I think the most important thing is that we sort of told this in as truthful a way as we could."
Promising Young Woman is coming exclusively to Sky Cinema and streaming service NOW TV from 16 April.
