Film review: An Education
Carey Mulligan and Peter Saragaard star in An Education
Whether you remember the sixties or are still rollicking through your teenage years, there’s something about this film that will fill you recognition. Sixteen year old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is bold, vivacious and intelligent enough to run rings around her father, played by Alfred Molina, in the opening scene, but she’s also like the rest of us were at that age, ready and willing to be swept along by the promise of a more exciting life.
The film is loosely based on the memoir of Lynn Barber, one of the UK’s most renowned writers and journalists, with a capability of getting the most unwilling candidate to open up and spill their deepest secrets. Though Nick Hornby has deftly fictionalised the screen-play to allow plenty of artistic license and prevent the blushes of those involved, there are rich seams of truth to be discovered, both about Lynn, about England at that time, and about adolescence in any time.
The film is aptly named, as Jenny meets David (Peter Saragaard), a thirty-something charmer who shortcuts her awakening from naivety into sexual and political awareness. Through mixing with his small circle of friends, discovering the shadier part of his business dealings, and a thorough introduction to jazz clubs, romance and even Paris, Jenny learns enough about the wider world to decide that school is pointless, her teachers ‘dead’, and her parents even deader. At one point Jenny says to David: “You have no idea how boring everything was before I met you.”
We’re shown her small world through her eyes, and realise just how limited choices were back then, especially for girls who were only expected to go to university to find a husband. As the headmistress played so magnificently by Emma Thompson points out, teaching’s not the only career option - there’s always the civil service…
One of the key elements of the film’s success is how utterly believable everything detail is, from the 1962 décor to the feelings and actions of the characters. Carey Mulligan proves herself to be an actress with chameleon qualities - on her first date with Peter she looks positively childlike against his glamorous friends, while later, in Paris, she is a sophisticated and sensual as a young Audrey Hepburn. In fact, before the end of the film we’re as seduced by Jenny as she is by Peter, which means we’re rooting for her right to the closing credits.
This is a coming of age story that succinctly captures the essence of an era on the brink of enormous change, a pleasing parallel with the main character’s development from girlhood to womanhood. It’s a film that’s set to become a classic, to watch endlessly on Sunday afternoons and fill us with nostalgia for the time when we were that naïve, and that filled with hope.
Director Lone Scherfig
Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Saragaard, Alfred Molina, Emma Thompson
Showing at Watershed, Bristol, and cinemas nationwide
To submit a review of a book, course, film, magazine or website, please email judy@EssentialWriters.com
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Can’t wait to go and see this. Thanks for the review. I’m waiting for it to arrive at my little provincial Midlands town …