Who needs brains? They never did a girl any good. Cassie Thomas (Carey Mulligan), a 30-year-old medical school dropout, lives with her parents (Jennifer Coolidge and Clancy Brown). Years earlier, her classmate Al Monroe (Chris Lowell) raped her best friend Nina Fisher; there was no investigation by the school or legal system. Now Cassie spends her nights feigning drunkenness in clubs, allowing men to take her to their homes, and revealing her sobriety when they try to take advantage. At her workplace, a coffee shop, Cassie is asked out by former classmate Ryan Cooper (Bo Burnham). On their date, he mentions that Al is getting married. She begins a plan to exact revenge on those she holds responsible for Nina’s rape starting with classmate Madison McPhee (Alison Brie) whom she gets drunk, leading to a series of voicemails with Madison unable to recall what happened to her in the company of a man Cassie has hired to take her to a hotel room. Then there’s the school dean Elizabeth Walker (Connie Britton). And, dressed to kill, Cassie dresses up at night and frequenting clubs and bars, pretending to be very drunk before teaching them a lesson. But will Ryan prove to be different from all the other guys? … Suddenly she was something else. She was yours. It wasn’t her name she heard when she was walking around. It was yours. Your name all around her. All over her, all the the time. And it just… squeezed her out. This whipsmart black comedy is so startling in intention and execution you are in danger of forgetting it’s a bitterly precise enacting of a rape revenge story (now that’s wish-fulfillment fantasy writ large). The first words uttered are Fuck her. And the thread of brutalist no-fault misogyny is brilliantly excavated with the knight in shining armour given the benefit of the doubt – until evidence emerges to prove otherwise. In this bubblegum production-styled world everything is bigger than life including Mulligan with her Bardot tresses (replaced by an homage to Harley Quinn’s in the final sequence) who delivers a career-best performance (among a sensational cast) channeling her inner Emily Lloyd a la Charles Bronson as the bereft and traumatised best friend who does what every woman wants to the preppier-than-thou men who epitomise droit de seigneur in the he said-she said injustice system where date rape and worse always favours them: Oh, you’d be amazed how much easier it is now with the internet to dig up dirt. In the old days we used to go through a girl’s trash. Now? One drunk photo at a party. Oh, you wouldn’t believe how hostile that makes a jury. Yup, it’s a man’s world and don’t we all know it: they’re never the cause. Until they’re found out. Scene after scene in this tightly structured non-romcom treads a crackling tightrope and emerges triumphant even if it’s second-hand (if seriously thwarted) revenge, isn’t that better than none at all? Challenging, funny, tragic and desperate, this is an audacious and very contemporary debut for writer/director (and TV’s Killing Eve showrunner) Emerald Fennell who makes an appearance as an online makeup tutor for those blow-job lips. With a soundtrack featuring everyone from Cyn to Spice Girls and a standout midpoint sequence featuring Paris Hilton. Produced by Margot Robbie. It’s every man’s worst nightmare, getting accused of something like that./ Can you guess what every woman’s worst nightmare is? MM#3232
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