I said in the video (and have told friends) that Promising Young Woman was basically an art-house version of I Spit On Your Grave. It’s as if writer/director Emerald Fennell thought, “Hmm, instead of showing the rape, let’s have it be in the past so it’s not exploitative.
And instead of the main character being the rape victim, let’s have the main character be the best friend of the rape victim who’s now dead. Then it’s become a story about love instead of just revenge.
And instead of violent revenge on the perpetrators, let’s have her affect positive change by teaching a lesson to all men.
And let’s have the story set years after the rape, so we can explore in-depth the psychological effects the incident had on her.
And let’s have powerful messages about how much rape culture permeates our society. As part of that, we’ll have the perpetrators not be backward hicks but upscale white-collar men – the type too often allowed to get away with harming women.
And let’s delve into the big themes about forgiving wrongdoers, for our own sakes if not for theirs, as well as how hard that actually is.”
But, after I said all that, you wanna watch the exploitation flick, well nothing wrong with that. I love both movies in very, very, VERY different ways.
I Spit On Your Grave is the infinitely more controversial one. Heck, Promising Young Woman probably isn’t controversial at all, unless you count “Men’s Rights Activists” and the people who wanna enable them by saying “Boys Will Be Boys”.
For anyone who doesn’t know the plot of I Spit On Your Grave, it’s extremely straightforward. A young woman is gang raped by four young men. After she gingerly walks away, naked, she is tracked down and it happens again. Repeat. After physically recovering, she violently murders one of the men. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Siskel & Ebert famously despised this movie to the extent that they actively led pickets outside theaters in their hometown of Chicago. That actually helped this tiny movie, that struggled for years to find distribution, get attention and gain a cult following on the new medium of VHS. Nowadays it’s a bona fide cult classic, having inspired a remake, two sequels to the remake, a sequel of its own, and a documentary about its legacy. Not to mention a very deluxe Blu-ray box set that I bought and experienced in its entirely in preparation for this post.
So…does it deserve its infamy? More importantly, does it deserve its fame?
The “exploitation” genre was a thing in the 70s, and basically meant movies whose whole purpose was to shock audiences with the amount of graphic sex and violence.
I’ve heard about similar rape revenge movies from the same time period (Lipstick, Death Weekend, Ms. 45, etc.), and I Spit On Your Grave isn’t as bad as some of them. No thrusting is really shown on screen – it’s mostly overhead/distant shots of the rapes. As far as the murders, we get discretionary shots so we only see blood instead of real gore.
More importantly, the story is told with conviction and a strong sense of purpose. On the deluxe Blu-ray box set, writer/director Meir Zarchi finally revealed his inspiration for the film. In 1974, he and a friend saw a traumatized naked woman walking through the park and, finding out she was raped, took her to a police station. She also needed an ambulance but the cop getting the information for the report was more interested in slut-shaming the woman with the broken jaw than getting her help. Zarchi’s anger, both before and after he successfully screamed at the cop to get the woman medical attention, led to this script.
Yes, we see a woman getting raped, four times, and spending a long time struggling, naked, to walk as a result.
The story needed to be told.
Men commit such horrific acts of sexual violence against women, with one in four women victims of rape in their lives, and people living in blissful ignorance should be confronted with the horror and motivated to take action to help change our society.
Much as we wish Jennifer could have just told the people what happened to her, and seen Johnny, Andy, Stanley, and Matthew brought to justice, we even see in the movie Johnny telling Jennifer she was asking for it wearing short dresses, lying around in a bikini, etc. and there’s no denying a defense attorney and a conservative jury would feel the same way. Plus, they and a conservative judge would not want to “ruin the young men’s lives”.
Thus our heroine takes matters into her own hands, reclaiming her power and even using her sexuality to lure her former attackers to their doom.
The whole story is told so unflinchingly, and determinedly, and it’s incredibly compelling.
The original title was actually Day Of The Woman, and Zarchi was heartbroken when the only distribution deal he got mandated changing the name and accepting a new poster.
That’s Demi Moore’s butt! She got an early break into show business by virtue of having a rounder bottom than Camille Keaton!
He never viewed this as an exploitation film, and although this movie became famous as I Spit On Your Grave, since Zarchi regained the rights he has only made deals with distributors who call it I Spit On Your Grave aka Day Of The Woman.
He considered it a movie about female empowerment!
I’ll make comments similar to what I said about Pretty Baby: yes there are people who will enjoy the rape scenes for all the wrong reasons. Even the vigilantism we see during the movie’s last act is hardly what we should want in a civilized society. Unfortunately, though, sexual assaults like that happen, and, until we see major systemic change where men are held more accountable (it’s sad how little’s changed since 1978), it’s understandable to fantasize about taking matters into your own hands.
The most powerful, basest human emotions are fully explored here. To say the least, it’s not a pleasant story but it’s one that needed to be told by a filmmaker driven by it.
Other movies in this franchise (sequels/remake) missed the point by overdoing the gore or making the plot too elaborate.
Shame, shame
The ONLY way to tell a story like this it is in a way too low-budget, grimy, and to-the-point to glamorize the events at all. Glad we’ll always have the original.
Bottom Line: Very well done Mr. Zarchi.
Questions? Comments? Feel free to write below.
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