Carey Mulligan is being hailed as the next big star for her radiant character Jenny, a 16-year-old drawn to a man almost twice her age in An Education. Lone Scherfig directs this delicate romantic drama based on the memoir of British journalist Lynn Barber. The film won a Spirit Award for Best Foreign Film.
“If you never do anything, you never become anyone” is Jenny’s philosophy. The controversial An Education will enchant and even thrill many because of Best Actress nominee Mulligan’s vivacious performance, and Peter Sarsgaard’s very sly, charming David.
Jenny is an adventurous spirit in the London suburb of Twickenham in 1961. She studies Latin at a private school and listens to French pop music. Jenny dreams of the day she will go to Oxford and escape her strict parents and the awkward neighborhood boys.
One day David approaches in his sports car as Jenny waits for a bus in the pouring rain. David is handsome, in his thirties and Jewish. He’s like no one she's ever met before.
Expressing concern for her cello, David coaxes Jenny to stop for him. She accepts a ride. “Have you ever been to a concert?” he asks. “Not a real one,” she replies. Smart, naïve and hungry for life experience, Jenny is hooked.
Amazingly, when David meets Jenny’s parents (Albert Molina and Cara Seymour), they accept the sophisticated man bearing flowers and compliments. He professes to be her cultural mentor.
Jenny and David attend an art auction, then a concert and dinner with his friends Danny and Helen (Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike). Eventually Jenny joins him on a trip to Paris for a weekend. A particularly moving Molina is swayed on David’s assurance that his aunt will chaperone.
Jenny wants to lose her virginity to David, but only on her seventeenth birthday. As word spreads about Jenny’s adventures, her teachers are not amused. Headmistress Emma Thompson threatens to expel her. Olivia Williams as Miss Stubbs implores the brilliant girl not to abandon her university ambitions.
Scherfig took particular care to ensure that the film’s interior sets, wardrobe and hairstyling evoke the early 1960’s. Both Jenny and Helen wear gaily colored print dresses, slinky cocktail wear and fanciful updos that evoke the period just before women’s liberation.
Jenny makes a devil’s bargain with her innocence, using David perhaps as much as he uses her. It is a life lesson she will never forget.
If you like An Education, you might enjoy: Shopgirl; Mademoiselle Chambon; Wild Grass.
An Education 2008 / PG-13 / 1 hr, 35 min
Cast Overview: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, Emma Thompson
Director: Lone Scherfig
Genres: Drama, Romantic Drama
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