Released January 18, 2010
“If people die the moment that they graduate, then surely it's the things we do beforehand that count.”
Those of the words of Jenny (Carey Mulligan), the 16 year old schoolgirl protagonist of An Education. For Jenny, life is a routine of good grades, dorky boys and parents for whom the best is not quite good enough. She is a star of the all-girl’s school she attends, casually drops French into common conversation and spends every waking hour crafting, along with her parents, ways to improve her chances of getting into Cambridge. Yet as with every above-average teenager, the routine can tire quickly for if she died before she went to Cambridge, she’d having nothing to show but empty cigarette boxes and a few bad Latin grades.
Outside of Jenny’s bedroom, away from the textbooks and tests, England herself stands at an odd juxtaposition. Behind her lays the ravages of the War and the end of Empire. In front, faintly visible like the early seconds of a sunrise, stands swinging London, rock and roll and a time when England will be cool. However England in 1961 is fully, and happily, square. It is Leave it to Beaver plus afternoon tea. It is not what Jenny is looking for.
But David is.
David (Peter Sarsgaard) is a handsome older man of an undetermined age. Jenny’s meeting with him is a chance one. She stands in the rain with a cello and he offers her a ride. Well… not her but her cello, for as a fan of music he couldn’t “bear to see such a beautiful instrument ruined.” Eventually room for Jenny is found in his sports car and the movie truly begins. Their initial meeting shows all the characteristics of what the future holds for the two of them; David suave and sophisticated, Jenny starry-eyed and smitten.
Their courtship begins quickly after as David shows Jenny a sliver of the life she’d only read about. Concerts, late night dinners, weekend trips to Cambridge and Paris. David spends his time not only courting Jenny but also, to a degree, her parents as well. Jenny’s father Jack (Alfred Molina), naturally weary of an older man who has eyes for his daughter, soon too falls under David’s spell, helped along by Jenny’s mother Marjorie (Cara Seymour), who wants her daughter to have all the experiences that she never did.
The idea of romantic entanglements with young girls has been a staple of a wide range of mediums for as long as dirty old men have lustily dreamed about it. Lolita, The Police’s great tune “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” and more, enough material to fill a gated “18 +” section at video store. Yet An Education tells the story from the girl’s perspective, creating an entirely different narrative. While most of these types of stories would inevitably include a scene in which some bro regales his other bros with stories about his young conquests, it’s instead Jenny, in full schoolgirl regalia, who dishes the dirt to the other girls in her school. Thus instead of a story about lust and desire, it’s the story of a young girl falling in love, trading in her old life for something shiny and new.
Above all this is a movie about The Other Foot. I spent the majority of the movie nervously checking the time remaining in the movie; waiting to see if and when this perfect life that Jenny has slowly built with David will all come crashing down. David’s possibly questionable background bubbles to the surface throughout the movie but, much like Jenny, you do your best to excuse any of his possible indiscretions because he does seem to truly love her and you, much like her father, want only the best for her.
The acting, the cinematography and the script by author and personal favorite Nick Hornby are all tremendous. Alfred Molina’s work as an uptight English father slowly seduced by the dashing David is among the best supporting acting I’ve seen this year. Emma Thompson’s small role as the school superintendent is correspondingly wonderful. Yet it is the 22 year old Carey Mulligan who steals the show. With the right mix of intelligence and fragility, Mulligan becomes the girl we’ve all known, the girl with the concrete belief that she is smarter than everyone. The movie leads you to wonder that if “it's the things we do beforehand that count,” Jenny would be better off packed away among Latin dictionaries and English papers than off cavorting with an older man, putting her heart, and her future, on the line.
3.5 out of 4
(Review by Jordan Beane)
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