Salt Lake City 2002: Stories of Olympic Glory (2003)

This review will contain MAJOR spoilers. Content is highly triggering. TW/CW for rape, drug usage, sexual harrassment, death. You can view full movie warnings here.

“I said, ‘what are you doing?’”

The delivery of this line during one of the first scenes of the film immediately set the overarching tone for this thriller/dark comedy. However, for women- and probably men, too- there wasn’t much to laugh about in director Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman, the unique adaptation a commentary on rape culture and the #metoo movement. For women, many lines in this film are the same rhetoric we’ve grown accustomed to hearing from men our whole lives; for men, the only slightly exaggerated conversations and mentality of the several awful men in the movie might potentially be a wake-up call. The (at times) kitschy dialogue does its job, immediately, very intentionally, playing upon womens’ discomfort, fear, and anger to put them in the main character’s frame of mind. Does this movie make you uncomfortable? Good. It was supposed to.