AWARDS:
NOMINATED: 82nd Annual Academy Awards: Best Motion Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress in a Leading Role: Carey Mulligan
WINNER: 2009 Sundance Film Festival: Cinematography Award, Audience Award
SYNOPSIS:
While her country teetered on the brink of a 1960s revolution, a British schoolgirl was rescued from suburban tedium by an affair with a man some twenty years her senior. Decades later, Lynn Barber described her cultural education in a memoir piece and found a fortunate fan in the writer Nick Hornby (Fever Pitch, About a Boy, High Fidelity). AN EDUCATION, adapted by Hornby from Barber’s story and directed by Lone Scherfig, won the audience award at Sundance and, despite its quaint origins and meager budget, has drawn wide international attention. At 16, Jenny (Carry Mulligan) meets David (Peter Sarsgaard), who offers a series of whirlwind and eye-opening experiences. To watch Jenny encounter bohemian Europe, urban life, and adult romance is a vicarious treat. Jenny’s transformation and Scherfig’s attention to time and setting make this film a feast for the eyes, as well.
REVIEW:
Coming-of-age has rarely felt so real....
Based on a memoir by journalist Lynn Barber, and adapted for the screen by Nick Hornby, this is the story of bright young thing Jenny (Carey Mulligan), who, at 16, falls for a much older smoothie (Peter Sarsgaard).
It is 1961, and Jenny, has spent her entire life being groomed up by her parents for Oxford – “After I’ve been to university I’m going to be French”, she declares. It seems nothing can halt her progressing to the point where she can “talk to people who know lots and lots”. Of course, the irony of most 16-year-olds’ lives is that, despite vaunting ambitions, the education of the film’s title comes in many forms, with the hardest to beat (and quite probably learn) being life-experience.
So when the witty, languidly suave David enters her life talking, of course, about lots and lots – think Ravel, jazz, Paris! - she is soon caught up in the sweet-sounding, near-sighted throes of romance. And it’s not just Jenny who falls for David. Her mum (Cara Seymour) and dad (Alfred Molina) become torn between the urge to see their daughter climb the social strata by using her head and the idea that maybe a relationship with David is a quick pass to higher society. Of course, those looking in can see it is likely to all end in tears.
Although we are talking age old themes here – first love, dodgy geezers, questions of class – the material is spectacularly well handled. Hornby’s script mixes comedy with more emotionally heavyweight issues in a way which lends a veracity to the story and director Lone Scherfig has the lightest of hands on the tiller. The look of the film evokes the period and her camerawork has a playful aspect but never gets in the way of the story.
Much will, deservedly, be made of Mulligan’s performance. She is terrific here, one of the most promising young British actresses for many a long year and one who could easily go on to carve out the sort of career Kate Winslet has. eyeforfilm
