Photo: Quentin Jones for Harper’s Bazaar I Carey wears: Cotton dress; leather sandals, both from a selection, Bottega Veneta

Dano’s intervention was, for her, radical. It meant that when it came to wearing that tiny dress in Promising Young Woman, a costume that would usually have induced paroxysms of anxiety, she could take all that unease and give it to her character. Insecurity was no longer undercutting her performance but being repurposed to fuel it. There’s a kinship between Promising Young Woman and two defining series written and made by women recently – Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and I May Destroy You by Michaela Coel; not just in the subject matter – whether the richness of female friendship or the aftermath of sexual assault – but also the creation of indelible heroines who are not, and are not trying to be, entirely likeable. “We are finally understanding that audiences want to see stories about women who aren’t necessarily always nice,” says Mulligan. “You still root for them, you still care about them – it’s brilliantly done in Fleabag, and brilliantly done in I May Destroy You. Some of the stuff that both of those characters do is totally morally questionable and unpleasant, but you’re 100 per cent behind them, the whole way through.”

Aside from the kind of compellingly ambiguous characters they showcase, there is also the fact that these stories can now actually get made. Reflecting on her career, Mulligan says there simply wasn’t the opportunity for women film-makers and writers to make such movies when she started. “I certainly didn’t feel any of this kind of activity for the first decade I was working.” In her view, a game-changing moment was Blue Jasmine, the 2013 Woody Allen film in which Cate Blanchett played the title role, winning an Oscar for her performance.