An Education

An Education tells the story of an innocent, slightly naïve sixteen-year-old, Jenny, who’s pretty and smart and desperately wants something that she is no way prepared to handle or deal with properly. But, truly, aren’t all teenagers like this? I know that I was.

Jenny meets David, the thirty-something who shall provide with the opportunities to see the things that she dreams of and experience her daydream fantasies, in a way that could be described as an almost-meet-cute. There’s something creepy about him from the onset, and it’s not just the age gap. There’s something in his eyes and behind the smile that seems too perfect to be true, too normal to really be sane, too well put together as sophisticated. The story tracks their relationship throughout its entire course, but he isn’t interested in just seducing Jenny, oh no, that would be too easy. He also goes about seducing the parents, who mean well but are, essential, wide-eyed country bumpkins to his smooth-talking cad.

Every performance in this film is a knockout. Carey Mulligan, who plays Jenny, needs to be put on the Oscar shortlist now. She does nothing showy or flashy, but creates a real-live person that you believe in. She feels like a real teenage girl from the moment she pops up on screen to the final few seconds, never once exhibiting an ounce of sweat or a break in character. But she wouldn’t have been able to play this so perfectly if Peter Sarsgaard’s David wasn’t played to perfection as well. He is. How Sarsgaard got lost in the awards shuffle this year is anyone’s guess, but he deserves to come in at the last second and steal a Best Actor slot from someone. Emma Thompson is wonderful as the quick-talking, acid-tongued headmistress of the school, and Olivia Williams de-glams to play a plain schoolmarm (she’s still rather fetching even with oily hair and huge glasses). But my favorite supporting performance would have to go to Rosamund Pike as the too-ditzy-for-words girlfriend of Dominic Cooper’s character. Normally cast as brainy-and-pretty roles, in which she seems right at home, she’s swimming upstream to play dumb and excels.

An Education reminds us that as teenager we may think we know what we want and how to obtain it, but once we’re handed it, it never works out the way we dreamed it would. Jenny gets to meet people who value art, but they value it as a status symbol and she loves it for aesthetic and personal reasons. She goes to France and has sex, but winds up wildly disappointed by something so brief. She falls for an older man, but quickly longs for the awkward and immature boys her own age. Gilded dreams abound.

To put it simply, An Education is extraordinary and positively delightful.