Film Commentary: What If a Man Insinuates That a Woman Is NOT Attractive? And in Print?
By Gerald Peary
Variety is wrong and cowardly to give in to Cary Mulligan’s misguided, damaging accusations.
Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman.
If you are a male, be wary of asking any feminist friend, my wife included, if another woman is attractive. She will bristle at your question and say, “Of course, she’s beautiful.” Sisterhood is extremely powerful here: ALL females are comely. But declaring so is strictly the province of other women. In this era, if a man describes a woman as attractive for other reasons than her wit and mind, he’s often courting censure. But even more unacceptable: what if a man insinuates that a woman is NOT attractive? And in print?
Which brings us to film critic Dennis Harvey’s now notorious comments about actress Carey Mulligan in his Variety review of Promising Young Woman.
If you haven’t yet seen this movie, here’s the setup: Mulligan plays a character, Cassie, deeply troubled by the irredeemable sexual sufferings brought on a female friend. Think the Brett Kavanaugh case. While others have covered up the ignoble past event, Cassie takes self-conscious action. She goes out each night to bars, allows herself to be picked up by men wanting to score, and then seeks revenge on them for the horrors that befell her friend.
Harvey’s review was mostly favorable —he called Mulligan’s performance “skillful, entertaining, and challenging”—but these are the words that got him into deep trouble. While a “fine actress,” Mulligan “seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale…. Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.”
Harvey’s review came out at Sundance in January 2020 at Promising Young Woman’s world premiere. At the time, nobody said anything publicly about it. But in December 2020, when the film finally was released, Mulligan railed against Harvey in an interview with The New York Times: “I couldn’t believe it…. He was basically saying I’m not hot enough to pull off this ruse. It drove me so crazy. I was like: ‘Really? For this film, you’re going to write something that is so transparent? Now? In 2020?’” (And she continues firing back in the January 28 The Guardian.)
At that point, all exploded. The Internet filled with protestation, citing Harvey’s review to show that there are just too many male critics to female critics. Karim Ahmad, Sundance’s Director of Outreach and Inclusion, complained, “This kind of sexist commentary reinforces why so much progress is still needed to bring representation to film criticism.” And Variety, while leaving the review as written on its website, partially capitulated, placing at the top of the review an apology for “insensitive language. “Where were his editors in the first place?” wondered Stephanie Zacharek, critic of Time Magazine.
But I wonder why Dennis Harvey, someone whom I’ve never met, got in trouble in the first place. To me: unfair, unfair. When I saw the movie, I had the same reaction that he did. Carey Mulligan has been wonderful playing genteel, classy, intelligent young women, the closest we have to an Audrey Hepburn. What if Hepburn, living today, had tried to act the boozy, trampy pickup of Promising Young Woman? It would’ve been as appropriate to interrogate the casting as Harvey observes about Mulligan: “She seems a bit of an odd choice…as this femme fatale.”
Again, Harvey lauded the performance of Mulligan who, playing against type, is “skillful, entertaining and challenging.” Translation: Mulligan succeeds in being as “hot” as required. What Harvey didn’t like was Mulligan’s “bad drag” costume and impossible hairdo. That’s not an attack on the actress but on the costume and makeup departments, and for the film’s director not intervening.
Variety is wrong and cowardly to give in to Cary Mulligan’s misguided, damaging accusations. Dennis Harvey did not use “insensitive language” at all, only accurate words. I’m pleased that Harvey, a 30-year Variety veteran, is unapologetic. He fought back in a spirited interview in The Guardian, saying “I was appalled to be tarred as a misogynist.” He explained, “I’m a 60-year-old gay man. I don’t actually go around dwelling on the comparative hotness of young actresses, let alone writing about that.”
Arts Fuse review of Promising Young Woman
Gerald Peary is a Professor Emeritus at Suffolk University, Boston, curator of the Boston University Cinematheque, and the general editor of the “Conversations with Filmmakers” series from the University Press of Mississippi. A critic for the late Boston Phoenix, he is the author of nine books on cinema, writer-director of the documentaries For the Love of Movies: the Story of American Film Criticism and Archie’s Betty, and a featured actor in the 2013 independent narrative Computer Chess. His new feature documentary, The Rabbi Goes West, co-directed by Amy Geller, is playing at film festivals around the world.
Tagged: Carey Mulligan, Dennis Harvey, Promising Young Woman
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I appreciate the defense, but even people who defend the review keep supporting the idea that somehow I thought she was “miscast” or “not attractive enough” for the role. Perhaps I just didn’t articulate it well enough to be clear, but all I was trying to say is that (given the course of her career) she’s not a predictable casting choice for this kind of role (which is a neutral observation, not a judgment); that she makes some eccentric performance choices that can seem odd in the moment but ultimately work; and her visual presentation (as see photo above) often lends a character already much invested in role-playing and disguise even more layers of ironical, costume-party distance. Maybe it was naive of me to expect people to grasp those intentions, as I phrased it, without having seen the movie. (Of course I was also writing in a festival setting for a trade publication primarily aimed at industry people.) But needless to say, it was mortifying to have the review interpreted as lookist and sexist by the people who actually made a movie that itself does not pander to conventional expectations, and often deliberately misleads the viewer in order to spring narrative surprises.
Hi, Dennis: I’m glad you appreciated my defense, but then it sounds like you are misreading my defense. I believe I got what you were trying to say, and that’s what I defended: not that she was miscast but that she was cast adventurously against what we see as her type from a series of roles. And she succeeded. And if it’s important for Carey Mulligan to believe that you thought her “hot,” then, even though that’s not your vocabulary, you and Mulligan are really not very far apart. OK, Carey, you were “hot.”
As the writer of the Arts Fuse‘s review of the film, I couldn’t agree more. It was a completely bad faith interpretation of criticism and far more reflective of people’s own eagerness to jump to the worst possible conclusion. Harvey’s comments on Cassie’s clubbing costume are pretty accurate — the extensions are REALLY obvious and not blended in properly (why she had to have a high-ponytail for this scene, who knows?).The more I think about this film, what it does completely wrong with its subject, its ending, and all the acclaim it’s receiving, the more I loathe it and what it represents.
Thanks, Nicole, for coming to my defense, and for adding some very interesting points of your own. I don’t think it’s a great film, but I appreciate it for being heated, polemical, and for not trying to make the main character very likable.
Thank you Anon, I am a cool girl. And I’m glad you enjoyed a film with a screenplay comprised of Jezebel comments that ends with not one but TWO dead women and the cops saving the day. Really nailed me on this. I clearly internalize misogyny.
this whole brouhaha came up in conversation the other night, What’s really disappointing here and National Film Critics ‘ defense is that the offending passage is left out (link and text below). Was that missed or intentionally omitted? If it’s the latter that’s disingenuous.
I don’t think Dennis meant any harm, but as a writer you have to own your words. Given it’s MeToo and how micro and macro aggressions against women, to comment on a woman’s appearance is dicey. Also too a point of the film is that to be a victim to predatory sexual practices, it doesn’t matter what you look like.. so to critique on that undermines the point–or even makes it. I do think the way Variety handled it was muddled at best. IMHO they should have spoke with Dennis and maybe allowed him to write a follow up to clarify or defend.
As to Mulligan and compare the glorious Ms. Hepburn, she’s an actor and one that wants to stretch herself. I applaud her for that and remember, we do have “Shame” right?
In any case I do appreciate the camaraderie and rally, it’s admirable, if misguided. I do thank Gerry and Dennis for their deep voices on film. As a father of young girl, maybe I have a different radar on this, but we need to listen here more and I wish every young man see Promising Young Woman.
https://twitter.com/NatSocFilmCrix/status/1359185359922319363
Mulligan, a fine actress, seems a bit of an odd choice as this admittedly many-layered apparent femme fatale — Margot Robbie is a producer here, and one can (perhaps too easily) imagine the role might once have been intended for her. Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.
It is either extremely naive or wholly disingenuous for Harvey to redefine his words are anything but a comment on Mulligan’s physical appearance. It’s lazy criticism, it’s shallow as fuck, and for it to coincide with a review for PYW is pretty hilarious and illustrates Harvey is certainly part of a societal problem. And Peary – dear god – thanks for telling Carey she is ‘hot’ because she dared to point out the vapid misogyny of Harvey’s criticism. I’m sure you wouldn’t understand working on something for months only to have it derailed by a idiotic commentary which distracts from everything you strived to achieve. Honestly, the only failing here is the studio not using Harvey’s quote as a marketing tool to illustrate just why the movie is needed.
TB Meek – nice comment – but maybe too forgiving – but thx for sharing the full txt.
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