An Education
Nothing unusual or illegal about this, swear
dir: Lone Scherfig
2009
If I was to tell you that this flick is the coming-of-age tale of a private schoolgirl seduced by an older, sophisticated man, then you’d tell me that this is clearly a porno or at the very least a remake of Rochelle, Rochelle, an young girl’s erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.
If I was then to tell you that it is nothing of the sort, and if I apologised profusely for having made a Seinfeld reference in one of my reviews, then you’d probably still not be interested in what is otherwise quite a charming little flick set in the early part of the 1960s.
Based on the memoirs of journalist Lynn Barber, with a screenplay written by Nick Hornby (of High Fidelity and About a Boy fame), An Education is set in 1961, and looks at what goes on in the life of an intelligent but unworldly girl called Jenny (Carey Mulligan), who comes across the path of a charming and sophisticated (from her limited perspective) older man called David (Peter Sarsgaard).
See, you could only get away with setting a flick like this in the 60s. Back in those halcyon days, the creepy setup looks a little less creepy. Back then you are meant to see it a little bit more as people being a product of their times, and acting accordingly. It's still creepy, but, y'know...
It makes it sound like it’s all about one thing, and it’s not. Sure, a seduction lies at the heart of the tale of woe, but it is more the seduction of an otherwise sensible young girl by a lifestyle she could only ever imagine before, let alone approach.
It’s specifically because Jenny has had so little exposure to the city, and the things that might go on there, and so little experience of anything outside her overbearing father (Alfred Molina), her cello classes and her studies, that David and his friends seem like such decadent aristocratic stars.
The thing is, it’s only to a teenage girl that these people could be what they appear to be, because to the viewer, they are anything but the sophisticates she desperately needs them to be.
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