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Director: Lone Scherfig
Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina, Dominic Cooper
Run Time: 95 minutes
Country: United Kingdom
Year: 2009
Language: English
Rating: PG (No advisory)
Winner of the audience award at the 2009 Sundance Film
Festival and a hit at the 2009 Toronto International Film
Festival®, An Education comes with a fantastic pedigree.
Director Lone Scherfig is the gifted Danish filmmaker behind
such features as Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and Just Like
Home, and the film’s screenwriter is the ever-popular Nick
Hornby, whose earlier books, including About a Boy and High
Fidelity, have already been made into highly successful films.
Set in London, England in the early sixties, An Education
is a gorgeous and nuanced coming-of-age tale with a
superb fable-like quality. Relatively new to acting, Carey
Mulligan turns in a luminous performance as Jenny, and
has already been compared to Audrey Hepburn in this role.
Jenny is a student with a great will and ambition to match.
She’s off to Oxford to prep for college and plans to take over
the world, when she, well, meets a boy.
Actually, to be precise, a man. David (Peter Sarsgaard,
Jarhead, Rendition) is dashing, older and seemingly perfect –
at least to Jenny. She falls head over heels in love with him,
and very soon is utterly entranced by the life he is about to
give her. Thoughts of school fly out the window. Of course,
nothing works out that perfectly and smoothly in life, and
before long her romance comes crashing down, forcing
Jenny to wonder who she really was when she began this
crazy journey, and what is left of her now as she realizes
she must begin anew.
The plotline alone does not account for the truly impeccable
tone of this film – it never misses a mark as it explores
its sensitive subject matter and fully rounds out its very
compelling main characters. Rarely does a film evoke an era
so thoroughly and thoughtfully as An Education does, plunging
viewers right into the world of this gloriously rendered
love affair gone awry.
“...told superbly, with heart, humor, a marvelous supporting cast and a dazzling recreation of a long-lost, pre-Mod London. It’s a movie with many wonderful small moments.” – Andrew O’Hehir, Salon.com
Reviews: www.metacritic.com/film/titles/education
Official Site: www.sonyclassics.com/aneducation
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