An Education showcases such a winning, star-making central performance from 24-year-old Carey Mulligan that it should perhaps be entitled A Revelation - though for those of us who caught Mulligan as Sally Sparrow in the Dr Who episode Blink back in June 2007 it's more a case of A Confirmation.
Most unusually for the BBC's venerable science-fiction show, the Doctor himself was a minor supporting character in Blink, which instead revolved around intrepidly intelligent Ms Sparrow – and Sparrow/Mulligan caused such an enthusiastic stir among certain sections of the programme's cognoscenti that many demanded she either join the series on a full-time basis as a companion or be given her own spin-off adventures.
These are both now highly unlikely prospects given Mulligan's dramatically heightened profile since An Education's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Indeed, she's widely tipped for a Best Actress Oscar-nomination for her performance in the tricky role of Jenny Mellor, a 1961 Twickenham schoolgirl on the cusp of 17 who becomes involved in a relationship with a much older man – suave wheeler-dealer and dapper chap-about-town David (Peter Sarsgaard).
Precociously articulate, clever, ardently Francophile, only-child Jenny is encouraged by her lower-middle-class parents (Alfred Molina, Cara Seymour) towards studying at Oxford (the only feasible option, apparently, being "secretarial college.") Her ambition is supported by sensible teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams), but the sudden arrival of the ever-so-charming David into the picture causes her to review and revise her priorities. Complications rapidly ensue.
While Jenny is shown listening to Juliette Greco albums and reading Albert Camus novels, it's interesting that the film is never so specific about the French cinema which Jenny mentions, almost en passant, as being one of her passions. Perhaps this is because director Scherfig - this is the Dane's second English-language project after the stilted, leadenly morbid/whimsical Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself (2002) – realises that even to mention the names of, say, Godard or Truffaut, would draw attention to how ploddingly conventional her own approach tends to be.
Indeed, apart from some mild "frankness" in the bedroom scenes – including some saucy dialogue relating to a banana - much about An Education would probably have seemed somewhat passé even to audiences back in '61. Well-appointed in its period details (apart from a couple of minor, careless flubs), this is pretty unadventurous, by-the-numbers stuff, from Paul Englishby's score to John de Borman's cinematography - an approach that sits incongruously alongside Jenny's free-spirited impatience with the post-war drabness of McMillan-era Britain ('Trade Unions in Total Chaos' blares one unlikely newspaper-stall headline.)
And while certain important scenes appear to be missing – we don't see Jenny's departure from England or her arrival in France when David whisks her off for a weekend in Paris; her exit from school is related via dialogue, after the event – this is more a case of clock-watching expediency than anything resembling nouvelle vague playfulness or experimentation.
Scherfig and company are mainly in the business of constructing a framework for their actors - and while there are no weak links in the ensemble, Sarsgaard's English accent (two dialect coaches are listed) doesn't quite hit the mark, his David too obviously a "wrong 'un" from the start. The narrative structure is effectively a matter of waiting for the scales to fall from young Jenny's eyes – and the scene in which she accidentally stumbles across evidence of his perfidy is one among many sequences which doesn't quite ring true, for all that Nick Hornby's script is based on an autobiographical essay by Lynn Barber.
The end credits include a disclaimer mentioning that several characters are composites and that certain incidents are fictional fabrications, and at several junctures plausibility is a nagging distraction – most notably, the idea that back in 1961 hardly anyone would notice the considerable age-gap between David (who looks at least mid-30s) and his teenage sweetheart, and the highly inappropriate nature of their intimacy.
[post-script : I'm reliably informed that such age-gaps weren't actually so unusual in this particular epoch. Color me corrected. 12.Nov.09]
One of the chief problems facing Hornby in his adaptation is to convince us that Jenny's parents would regard David as anything other than a dubiously-motivated predator – and, despite the best efforts of Molina and Seymour, the couple's behaviour and attitudes are too close to two-dimensional caricatures of dopey suburbanites. They fare a little better than Emma Thompson, whose patronising, prejudiced headmistress seems to have strayed in from a different movie entirely (her objections to David's wooing of her pupil are chiefly founded on anti-semitism.)
Rosamund Pike, meanwhile, provides welcome, notably effective (indeed, scenestealing) light relief as a dim socialite of David's acquaintance*, and the screen-time allocated to Olivia Williams' Miss Stubbs, with whom Jenny has an intriguingly complex and varied relationship over time, could have been profitably expanded.
But it's Mulligan's Jenny – who has the looks of an innocent child but the surprisingly deep and mature voice of an adult – who must, by the nature of the project, be front and centre pretty much throughout. The actress duly delivers a nuanced interpretation of an inexperienced girl making a belated and traumatic transition to adulthood, and the picture does manage to capture her various milieus and the excitement she feels as she glimpses the possibilities beyond Twickenham's stifling confines.
'Passion and Practicality in Jane Eyre' is the (fleetingly-glimpsed) title of one of Jenny's essays – and the film duly, dutifully dramatises how she comes to an eventual reconciliation between the two. Brainy, articulate, unorthodox Jenny of course receives an A+ for her efforts – Scherfig and Hornby would be lucky to get much higher than a C for theirs.
Neil Young
8th November 2009
AN EDUCATION
5/10
UK 2009 (copyright-dated 2008)
directed by Lone Scherfig
100m (BBFC)
[12/28]
seen at The Tyneside Cinema, Newcastle, 8th November 2009 (paid £6.00)
* if it was Pike's idea to clink those glasses together as she leans over the balcony, brava!
