An Education is a British film I heard about when Carey Mulligan got nominated for an Oscar this year. It’s based on the memoirs of a journalist named Lynn Barber*, with the screenplay written by Nick Hornby. It’s very good indeed.
Mulligan plays Jenny, a precocious and witty sixteen year-old whose father (the reliably impressive Alfred Molina) wants her to go to Oxford and yaps constantly about how much he’s had to sacrifice. When an older man named David (Peter Sarsgaard, oily, smooth, untrustworthy) appears and expresses interest in Jenny, her parents’ wariness is matched by the whiff of security. This makes them quite as swept off their feet by the handsomely turned-out man as Jenny is off hers. The audience spend much of this film worried for Jenny, but Jenny knows what she’s doing, or so she allows herself to think.
This is where the movie works: it’s not the classic morality tale which would leave Our Heroine pregnant and clueless at the end; it’s not the romcom which would remove both characters instantly to some sort of idyll full of shoes and cocktails. Instead it’s the portrait of a well-seasoned artist as a young girl. She falls hook, line and sinker for his trinkets, his concerts and his art collection, and maybe she gets herself a little used in the process. But (and this is where it takes an actor as expressive and subtle as the wonderful Mulligan) there’s a hint that this is the Troy she was born to burn. Jenny may well have steered clear of Mr. Hot Pants but she would have been bored doing so. Jenny has too much energy and wanderlust to miss out on an adventure like this because she has a Latin exam in the morning. This fact emerges over the course of three meetings with her Headmistress, played by Emma Thompson channelling Margaret Thatcher, when the latter gets wind of her liaison with the older man. One gets the feeling that Jenny is enjoying every bit of this dalliance and although it may not end well (it doesn’t take a spoiler alert to know this won’t end perfectly) she is richer for the experience. For some reason I was reminded of Go, Doug Liman’s 1999 tale of ecstasy use by a bunch of young Californians. They all nearly die and we worry about them and their lost innocence, but the characters end the film wondering where to go the following night. Again! Again!
Carey Mulligan is a star. She has the youth to play sixteen but, aged 22 when the movie was shot, the distance to have fun with her character’s discoveries. Visual comparisons to Audrey Hepburn are odious and based more on costume design than anything else. Mulligan has a fresh, open and flirtatious presence which Hornby compliments with some snappy dialogue and the ability to keep the inevitable original. She can hold her head up against the Meryl Streeps and especially Sandra Bullocks of this world when the list is read of the best performances of the year. And she is not a little easy on the eye, to boot.
From its title to the courageous way it avoids the classic scenes of deflowering, revelation and familial schism followed by epiphany, An Education shows the life in material such as this: just because the temptation of That London have been a regular staple of domestic drama since the late 50’s doesn’t mean that the story’s been told. We have a little bit of forced significance when the director tries to map Jenny’s emergence into the harsh light of the sixties with that of England itself, but I didn’t buy it and neither should you. It’s at its best when the chasm looms just out of sight and all the characters remain deliberately oblivious to it. It’s hugely enjoyable for its very avoidance of Jenny’s victim status and deserves a look. I myself plan to show it to my daughter when she’s old enough, every Christmas day as part of a double bill with Vera Drake.
What I Find Works 