Promising Young Woman’s five nods include the first for a female British director. Its star and writer-director discuss telling women’s stories, tackling difficult subjects – and feeling shellshocked

Promising Young Woman is audacious from the off. A genre-bending revenge thriller, it ricochets between romcom and horror to radical and unsettling effect. Carey Mulligan plays Cassie, a medical school drop-out traumatised by the assault of her best friend. By day, she works in a coffee shop; by night, she fakes blackout drunkenness in bars. If “nice guys” take advantage, Cassie snaps open her sober eyes to teach them a lesson.

The film made history this week, landing five Oscars nominations: picture, editing and actress (Mulligan’s second run at the award), as well as original screenplay and director for Emerald Fennell. With her debut feature, Fennell has become the first British woman to be nominated for the director prize. This is the first year in which two women (Fennell and Nomadland’s Chloe Zhou) are in the running; they are only the sixth and seventh women to be shortlisted.