Jenny (Carey Mulligan) was studying hard foradmission to Oxford,which she hoped would open a garden of knowledge and experience. The road oflearning took an unexpected detour one day when a handsome stranger in abeautiful car offered to rescue her and her cello from a rainy bus stop. David(Peter Sarsgaard), a man of easy and irrepressible charm, spoke to her of musicon the short ride home to her parents. And when he invited her to a Ravelconcert, she shyly accepted.
Her parents were, at first, suspicious and opposed.Alfred Molina plays Jenny’s father as a man of rotund cheer and pinchedexperience, determined that his daughter “get on” well in life through a goodeducation and, eventually, marriage. He is fearful of life beyond thecomfortable cul-de-sac he has settled in and worried about slippingdownhillnot without reason in a country that only recently had survivednightly air raids and a U-boat blockade, whose population ached from a dampchill never entirely dispelled and survived on ration coupons. The GreatDepression lingered on into the 1950s. But David is a charmer, and his show ofaffable sincerity and facility with well-shaped compliments won the day withnary a harsh word or rebuke.
Before long, Jenny is spirited away by David into aworld of luxury and style, expensive restaurants and gilt-edged nightclubs; anight flight to Paris and a walk along the Seine are suddenly in reach. It’s like a fairy tale, withJenny elevated from scullery maid to princess by the wave of David’s hand.“It’s wonderful to find a young person who wants to know things,” David offersin explanation for his fascination with a girl who might be 10 years his junior.For her part, no words are needed. She is head over heels in love with thesophisticated, caring man she assumes David to be. But as in many fairy tales,the moral is to question appearances. The shadow side of David’s life, whichJenny blithely ignores, conceals many grave secrets.
An Educationis drawn from a true story, the memoir of British writer Lynn Barber, adaptedinto a screenplay by novelist Nick Hornby (HighFidelity) and directed with an eye for the period and low-key cinematicastuteness by Danish director Lone Scherfig (a graduate of the Dogme95 movement). Sarsgaard gives aclose-to-the-vest performance that, at moments, recalls Orson Welles in The Third Man, a charming and mysteriousfigure capable of much harm. But AnEducation is dominated by Mulligan’s winsome performance, playing Jennywith a nod to Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina,an ingénue shedding the cocoon of her gray schoolgirl uniform and transformedinto a young woman of grace and hard-earned wisdom. n
