Variety, Promising Young Woman & NSFC

More publicity for my girl Carey. Oscar here she comes.

Also, interesting to see that some of you don't see anything wrong with a man writing a review saying that a woman isn't hot enough to be raped. Class just oozing from every pore.

Yeah, I’m having a hard time connecting the dots on that.

If "class" means knowing how to read and not making things up, yep.

He doesn't say this explicitly, but I think because he offered Robbie (who looks like a Barbie doll) as the alternative, that's what was inferred. 

Edit: Certainly it was inferred by Mulligan, at any rate. 

I agree that's the point he was making, and in so doing I think he missed the point himself - the character says something along the lines of "I wasn't very 'bang-able' in my college days" - she has adopted this sort of "drag" as a means of exacting her revenge - I don't think it's meant to seem natural or innate in her.

Just my $0.02. 

pacinoyes - I do think Mulligan is using it as a campaign tactic (or her team is directing her to...). Reviewers have stated explicitly before (pre-MeToo) that she lacked the beauty necessary for a part (The Great Gatsby), and that simply wasn't the case here. 

People have said this, but when else was she supposed to have brought it up? The film had been on the shelf since Sundance and the interview was in tandem with the theatrical release. In fact, she said her team tried to dissuade her from saying anything and she herself debated whether or not to for fear of rocking the boat.

The line in question: "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."

I think most people here would agree that when they think "femme fatale", they're more likely to think of Angelina Jolie and Margot Robbie than Kate Winslet and Carey Mulligan. It doesn't even necessarily mean that you think Jolie is more attractive than Winslet. It just means that Jolie has played more femme fatale types (Original Sin, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Wanted, Salt, etc.) than someone like Winslet, just like Robbie has played more femme fatale types (Focus, Terminal, Dreamland, etc.) than someone like Mulligan.

Harvey was pretty explicit in what he meant when he said Robbie was perhaps the more seemingly obvious choice. He doesn't even claim that Robbie would definitely be the better choice; just that you'd expect Robbie to be considered for the role before Mulligan. That people are actually offended by something that plainly obvious is... well, not really that surprising anymore.

It's more the next line ("Whereas with this star, Cassie wears her pickup-bait gear like bad drag; even her long blonde hair seems a put-on.") that people are objecting to more. He's not explicitly saying it, no, but it can easily be read that way. Even if he didn't mean it, it's poor wording on his part and he should have at least acknowledged that rather than try to blame everyone else. Especially him saying that Mulligan was crazy for reading it that way and suggesting that she's only doing it to get an Oscar sounds awfully like gaslighting. There's a dark irony that this is happening around this particular film.

That's explicitly a comment on Cassie's attire, not on Carey Mulligan's looks or beauty. I thought Cassie looked much more pretty in her coffee shop attire than her pickup-bait attire (which looked fake and trashy, by design), so I can see what Harvey meant by that comment.

But I agree with Tyler that it was a misguided observation and a poor review in general for several reasons, and highlighted Harvey's misunderstanding of the movie and what it was saying. His review still doesn't comment on Mulligan's looks, let alone be sexist or misogynistic.

I think it's ill-considered for people to expect one party to be charitable when the other party isn't. One could just as easily argue that Mulligan is gaslighting Harvey by claiming he said she wasn't hot enough. While Harvey could have been the bigger person and handled this more graciously, I don't think it's fair to blame him for responding in kind.

Personally, I like to give most people the benefit of doubt. I read the review, Harvey doesn't explicitly say anything Mulligan inferred from his review, and he has later denied it himself. I will give him the benefit of doubt (although, honestly, I don't really have much of a doubt going by my interpretation of his review). Mulligan says her inference from the review was that Harvey was saying she wasn't hot enough for the role. I will give her the benefit of doubt and assume she honestly interpreted the review that way and isn't claiming that as part of an Oscar campaign (because she only just mentioned it in passing and is not responsible for this thing blowing up anyway). But it's hard for me to blame Harvey for not being charitable enough to apologize for his wording when Variety and Mulligan haven't been charitable enough to accept Harvey's elucidation of his review.