Abstract

This study focuses on the opening scenes of the film Promising Young Woman, directed by Emerald Fennell, approaching them through the film itself and its screenplay, also adapted for the screen by Fenell. Our approach is to analyse how in the initial images of the film and in the presentation of its protagonist, two types of intentional gazes are evident: one that, following Laura Mulvey, we will call the male gaze, and another that, building upon the ideas of Iris Brey and Joey Soloway, we will call the female gaze. Hopefully, the binarism of these terms will make sense throughout the analysis. In the film, both gazes seem to go in diametrically opposite directions; the male gaze operates as a strategy for presenting and designing the main character "Cassie," while the female gaze is established as a narrative strategy of the film, marking the viewpoint from which it is told.

Keywords: male gaze | female gaze | representation | desire | objectification | subjectification