An Education (2009)
Directed by Lone Scherfig
95 minutes
* * * * *
It’s 1961 and England has finally recovered from World War II. Skiffle and the Teddy Boys are a fading memory and life in London suburbs such as Twickenham has settled into a predictable and monochromatic sameness. That’s just fine by Jack (Alfred Molina), a lower-middle-class bloke who’d rather have tinned salmon than French cuisine and isn’t even sure how to get to London’s West End theater district. It’s also fine with his don’t-rock-the-boat wife Marjorie (Cara Seymour). But it sure as hell isn’t okay with their daughter Jenny (Carey Mulligan). She’s cute as a button, sharp as a whip, bored out of her mind, and thirsty for adventure.
As viewers, we know what Jenny doesn’t—that The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Mods and Rockers, Carnaby Street, and feminism are looming on the British horizon. As Jenny sees it, Oxford is her ticket out of Twickenham, so she’s pushed herself to be the best student at her private girls’ school and passes her out-of-class hours practicing cello, poring over Latin translations, and being pursued by a gangly and awkward teenaged boy. So what would you do if you were Jenny and met David (Peter Sarsgaard), a man more than twice your age who could expose you to the symphony, ply you with Champagne, and whisk you off to Paris?
That’s the central dilemma of An Education, but don’t let its seemingly creepy premise deter you from seeing it; it’s one the best films of 2009 and you’re unlikely to see another performance better than Mulligan’s. Those who’ve not seen it have denounced An Education as a predator movie. In truth, one of the subtexts of the superb script—Nick Hornby’s reworking of Lynn Barber’s memoir—is a morals-challenging exploration of who’s taking advantage of whom. David is, of course, a rogue, but is he any more so than Jack or Marjorie, who are perfectly willing to set aside propriety and affiance their precocious daughter to get a crack at David’s wealth? Are Jenny’s small lies any less pernicious than David’s big ones? How does one parse truth? And is Jenny really a victim? As the title suggests, she is introduced to a world of glamour, opulence, and opportunity that she could not have entered on her own.
This film is too smart and too well crafted to allow for simple answers. It features sparkling dialogue—thanks to Hornby—and superior acting. Sarsgaard tightrope walks between charm and smarm, never once losing his footing, just as Molina and Seymour hit all the right notes as parents who concern gives way to bourgeois longing. Several minor roles are equally delicious—Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike play Danny and Helen, David’s glittery partners in perfidy. Both are unapologetically shallow thrill-seekers who, for Jenny, are exciting counter role models to Miss Stubbs, her slightly shabby intellectual mentor (skillfully played by Olivia Williams).
At the end of the day, though, this is Carey Mulligan’s film and she is an absolute delight. Not since Ellen Page’s emergence in Juno have we encountered such a delightful and vibrant newcomer. Director Lore Scherfig—a Swede best known for her 2000 film Italian for Beginners—has the uncommon good sense to keep her camera pointed in Mulligan’s direction and we can’t get enough of her. Mulligan, who is twenty-four in real life, is totally convincing as a girl/woman equally at home in her knee-socked school uniform and in a slinky black dress and heels. She is, in turns, a smart aleck, a vulnerable waif, a schemer, naïve, and insightful. Like Sarsgaard Mulligan performs a delicate balancing act—in her case that of a teen moving between wide-eyed wonder and burgeoning sophistication. At one moment she is wiser and more confident than the adults around her; at the next she is girlishly clueless.
Mulligan is also, apparently, way more appealing than Lynn Barber, whose story she is recreating. Barber is a columnist known for being provocative and difficult. I gather that her reputation in Britain is that she’s something of a cross between Camille Paglia and Erica Jong. The film’s coda hints at what comes next. I do not know Barber’s work well enough to judge whether she’s been misunderstood, but I can tell you that you’ll have no trouble evaluating Carey Mulligan. She’s thoroughly lovable. Wrap that Oscar!--LV
Directed by Lone Scherfig
95 minutes
* * * * *
It’s 1961 and England has finally recovered from World War II. Skiffle and the Teddy Boys are a fading memory and life in London suburbs such as Twickenham has settled into a predictable and monochromatic sameness. That’s just fine by Jack (Alfred Molina), a lower-middle-class bloke who’d rather have tinned salmon than French cuisine and isn’t even sure how to get to London’s West End theater district. It’s also fine with his don’t-rock-the-boat wife Marjorie (Cara Seymour). But it sure as hell isn’t okay with their daughter Jenny (Carey Mulligan). She’s cute as a button, sharp as a whip, bored out of her mind, and thirsty for adventure.
As viewers, we know what Jenny doesn’t—that The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Mods and Rockers, Carnaby Street, and feminism are looming on the British horizon. As Jenny sees it, Oxford is her ticket out of Twickenham, so she’s pushed herself to be the best student at her private girls’ school and passes her out-of-class hours practicing cello, poring over Latin translations, and being pursued by a gangly and awkward teenaged boy. So what would you do if you were Jenny and met David (Peter Sarsgaard), a man more than twice your age who could expose you to the symphony, ply you with Champagne, and whisk you off to Paris?
That’s the central dilemma of An Education, but don’t let its seemingly creepy premise deter you from seeing it; it’s one the best films of 2009 and you’re unlikely to see another performance better than Mulligan’s. Those who’ve not seen it have denounced An Education as a predator movie. In truth, one of the subtexts of the superb script—Nick Hornby’s reworking of Lynn Barber’s memoir—is a morals-challenging exploration of who’s taking advantage of whom. David is, of course, a rogue, but is he any more so than Jack or Marjorie, who are perfectly willing to set aside propriety and affiance their precocious daughter to get a crack at David’s wealth? Are Jenny’s small lies any less pernicious than David’s big ones? How does one parse truth? And is Jenny really a victim? As the title suggests, she is introduced to a world of glamour, opulence, and opportunity that she could not have entered on her own.
This film is too smart and too well crafted to allow for simple answers. It features sparkling dialogue—thanks to Hornby—and superior acting. Sarsgaard tightrope walks between charm and smarm, never once losing his footing, just as Molina and Seymour hit all the right notes as parents who concern gives way to bourgeois longing. Several minor roles are equally delicious—Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike play Danny and Helen, David’s glittery partners in perfidy. Both are unapologetically shallow thrill-seekers who, for Jenny, are exciting counter role models to Miss Stubbs, her slightly shabby intellectual mentor (skillfully played by Olivia Williams).
At the end of the day, though, this is Carey Mulligan’s film and she is an absolute delight. Not since Ellen Page’s emergence in Juno have we encountered such a delightful and vibrant newcomer. Director Lore Scherfig—a Swede best known for her 2000 film Italian for Beginners—has the uncommon good sense to keep her camera pointed in Mulligan’s direction and we can’t get enough of her. Mulligan, who is twenty-four in real life, is totally convincing as a girl/woman equally at home in her knee-socked school uniform and in a slinky black dress and heels. She is, in turns, a smart aleck, a vulnerable waif, a schemer, naïve, and insightful. Like Sarsgaard Mulligan performs a delicate balancing act—in her case that of a teen moving between wide-eyed wonder and burgeoning sophistication. At one moment she is wiser and more confident than the adults around her; at the next she is girlishly clueless.
Mulligan is also, apparently, way more appealing than Lynn Barber, whose story she is recreating. Barber is a columnist known for being provocative and difficult. I gather that her reputation in Britain is that she’s something of a cross between Camille Paglia and Erica Jong. The film’s coda hints at what comes next. I do not know Barber’s work well enough to judge whether she’s been misunderstood, but I can tell you that you’ll have no trouble evaluating Carey Mulligan. She’s thoroughly lovable. Wrap that Oscar!--LV
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