The second An Education opened at Sundance last January the buzz began. The buzz was most especially focused on the star making performance of a pretty unknown English actress Carey Mulligan. Sometimes the buzz blows over or gets overtaken by new buzz, but the buzz on Mulligan, and the film, has stayed steady all through the lead up to the film’s release today.
I was blown away by Mulligan when I saw her act circles around Kristin Scott Thomas in The Seagull (which they are now making into a movie with most of the same cast) on Broadway in the fall of 2008, and I remember how much I enjoyed her performance in The Amazing Mrs. Pritchard so I knew that she would be great in An Education, and she is. The good news is that she is one just one of the excellent pieces in a pie full up of excellent pieces. Everything about An Education is great which is directed by Danish director Lone Scherfig from a script by Nick Hornby based from the memoir by Lynn Barber.
An Education is a feminist coming of age story of Jenny (Mulligan) a too smart, too worldy for her own good, young woman in 1961 London when young women had few choices. The country is still living in a post war mentality. The 60s really haven’t begun yet. What Jenny has going for her is that being the only child of Jack played by Alfred Molina, he has drilled it into his daughter that she must get a proper education in order to be successful. She believes it and works hard for it. From those scenes you get the sense that dad has been drilling her about getting into Oxford since she could walk.
But Jenny’s different and her role models of educated women are not very enticing, so when she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard in a creepily good performance) an older con man who opens her up and offers her a different type of education she leaps in head first. He takes her to concerts, makes up stories about people he knows and not only enchants Jenny, but also her parents so much so that plan A for Jenny’s education — university — is thrown out the window in favor of plan B — marriage.
So Jenny, this young woman with so much potential to be different and special because she is so smart becomes just like all the other girls. But she doesn’t. Suffice it to say that things don’t work out with David cause he is a con man and Jenny needs to figure out how to get back onto plan A.
It’s not easy. Jenny has let down the women who have invested some serious time and attention into her future. Olivia Williams as her teacher Miss Stubbs is incredibly personally hurt when Jenny betrayed her, as is the school’s headmistress played by Emma Thompson. These are women who close plan A, but had to make immense personal sacrifices to become educated women in that time.
Most of all An Education is about choices and how each choice we make has consequences and can snowball out of control. But it also about how those choices teach us — give us an education if you will — so that as we grow up maybe, just maybe, we will make different ones next time.
Film opens today in limited release and will then roll out over the next couple of weeks.
Can’t wait to see this one. Thanks so much Melissa. Have to get to Whip It first. I love having so much to look forward to at the theater.