Review #811: 'An Education' (2009)

An Education's protagonist Jenny, expertly played by an Oscar-nominated Carey Mulligan, is the best reason to the see the film. Set in 1961, Jenny is one half middle-class good girl, the other half a rebellious and potentially wild 16 year old child with a thirst for all things French. Studying hard to be accepted into Oxford, Jenny really longs for the wonders of Paris, and in her spare time indulges in the free-spiritedness of the music and the New Wave movies of the time. Her parents, played by Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, are proud but pushy. Her father especially longs to see his daughter succeed and his own social standing bumped up a couple of notches. That is until she meets the much-older David (Peter Sarsgaard).

David is a smooth-talking charmer who seduces Jenny by taking her out to opera's and expensive dinners with his flash friend Danny (Dominic Cooper) and his girlfriend Helen (Rosamund Pike). He charms her parents too, and convinces them to allow him to take Jenny to see his friends in Oxford, where she will stay with famous author C.S. Lewis. He also takes her to Paris and asks for her hand in marriage, and Jenny laps it up with a naive curiosity. But David is a philandering con-man, and when the truth is uncovered, Jenny is faced with important decisions about her own fate.

An Education is a perfectly nice and dainty British production that ultimately fails in it's attempts to tackle the big themes. The build-up is well paced, as Mulligan is exquisite, competently backed-up by a Colin Firth-channelling Sarsgaard. It looks and feels like 1961, and Nick Hornby's Oscar-nominated script sensitively handles the topic of a young girl and a much older man. But it's in the second half, when David is unravelled, that things become predictable and plodding, and Cooper and Pike's talents are wasted. The final moments try and wrap up every single aspect of Jenny's life and character in a few sentences, betraying the careful approach to Jenny's complex nature which came before. Nice enough, but hardly memorable.


Directed by: Lone Scherfig
Starring: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Cara Seymour, Olivia Williams, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, Emma Thompson
Country: UK/USA

Rating: ***

Tom Gillespie