Breaking The Scene (Promising Young Woman — First Ten Pages)

It felt impossible to pick any single scene from Promising Young Woman. It’s continually inventive, tension-wrought, and never allows the audience to feel comfortable in their hopes. And though so much of this film is worthy of analysis, I figured the first ten pages are really worth looking into.

Link to Pages: https://focusfeaturesguilds2020.com/promising-young-woman/screenplay/Promising_Young_Woman.pdf

Written By: Emerald Fennell

Sequence Outline:

1. A group of men are in the club, talking about frustration with the women in their workplace.
2. They notice CASSANDRA, drunk and alone in the corner. They debate who among them is going to talk to her. JEZ, seemingly innocent, decides to ‘help’ her.
3. Jez talks to Cassandra and asks if she has a ride home. She tells him that she lost her phone and doesn’t know where her friends are. Jez offers to take an Uber home with her.
4. In the Uber, Jez decides to take Cassandra home with him instead, assuming they’ve had a ‘connection’.
5. At his apartment, Jez pours Cassandra a large cup of liqueur. Sits besides her.
6. She drinks it, says it’s disgusting. He ignores her, comments on how beautiful she is. He kisses her, and she doesn’t reciprocate.
7. Cassandra says she feels sick. Jez offers to take her to his bed so she can lie down.
8. Cassandra gets onto the bed and tries to sleep. Jez wakes her and begins kissing her all over, despite her giving no reciprocation.
9. Cassandra tells Jez to stop. Reveals that she’s been stone cold sober this entire time.
10. Jez stops and stares at her, horrified.

Why It Works:

Start With the Antagonist: For almost all it’s entirety, this is a story told strictly from Cassandra’s POV, so the fact that we start in a conversation with misogynistic men is, well… strange. Naturally, you’d think that we’d start with Cassandra’s perspective front and center. What this does though is establish a number of important elements that undoubtedly informs the rest of the world we experience. For one, their conversation confirms the bias that Cassandra has against the world- everyone is selfish and driven by destructive ego complexes. On top of this, because we’re starting from the perspective of the men, the fact that Cassandra is sober isn’t known to us. Thus, a danger is established that gets paid off by the end of the sequence when we switch out of the male POV and into Cassandra’s.

Sympathy Through Danger: When we first see Cassandra, we’re immediately worried for her. She appears alone, too drunk to function, and is in the sights of men who, despite what they might say, definitely don’t have the best intentions. As a result, we’re already rooting for her to succeed, and similarly, are even more emotionally opposed to the outwardly sexist men in the scene. This not only makes Cassandra a character that’s easy to relate to- it makes the reveal of her sobriety feel triumphant and relieving, altogether making the sequence hugely satisfying.

Dread Through Context: Despite Jez’s apparent concern at the beginning, it is painfully obvious to the audience that he isn’t nearly as well-intentioned as he pretends to be. From the first shot of Cassandra, we recognize the danger of the situation and, despite Jez’s attempts to offset our concern with promises of being a “nice guy”, it’s painfully clear exactly what may soon be occurring. This instills an immediate dread and, similarly, ties closely into Fennell’s theme — no one is innocent.

The description Fennell provides, though technically “unfilmable”, gives a startlingly clear look at the motivation and context of the scene through wonderfully worded sarcasm.

The Little Things: Another thing which immediately drew me into this script was how some of the most minute details are brought into riveting clarity. Fennell is unafraid to use “unfilmable” action lines in order to paint a clear setting and tone for the reader. Lines like “the kind of last-resort place people end up after work having accidentally nailed ten ‘just one’ drinks” are wonderfully succinct and make reading through the script ridiculously engaging. This, of course, is fairly specific to the script, but it undoubtedly shows on screen through how the actors approach the material and, similarly, how they interact with the setting.

Not Who They Say They Are: One of the things this film is most successful in is how it continually keeps the audience guessing as to whether or not to trust the characters they’re being presented with. For example, in this opening scene, we have Jez. Though his first few beats make him seem fine (largely through contrast with the outwardly crude men around him), he becomes a different person entirely once given the chance. His character ‘switch’ mirrors nicely with Cassandra’s shift from helpless and vulnerable to strong and defiant. These moments help establish a solid sense of uncertainty in the audience, thus making every newly introduced character seem mysterious and, in their own right, frightening.

Summary:

There’s an oft-repeated maxim in screenwriting circles that the most important part of your film lies in the first ten pages. I’m too young/inexperienced to verify this, but if it is true, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better first ten pages than those of Emeral Fennell’s Promising Young Woman. By tying together different threads of tension and supplying the audience with a wonderfully surprising ending, these first ten pages would undoubtedly get any audience member excited for the remainder of the story.