Certainly the best British movie of the year (not that that would be difficult!) It's a very good movie with plenty of little quips to keep you amused and some very good acting from all the cast and a great screenplay by Nick Hornby. But what killed me as ever was the unnecessary twee music which all directors put in period piece UK movies, which says, 'Look at us, aren't we so frightfully individual and different to you' ...aaaaghh! You English just don't get it do you?!
After a classy linear title sequence, the action begins in earnest in schoolgirl Jenny’s (Carey Mulligan) suburban Twickenham abode in the early 60s. The film moves reasonably fast and it’s not long before the classroom is substituted for a rollercoaster ride through every adolescent girl’s dream existence (bunking off school to attend auctions, smoke cigarettes from France, dash off on paid weekends in Oxford and Paris) courtesy of the Lolita-chasing David (Peter Sarsgaard) who befriends a drenched Jenny at the bus stop.
While it’s beautifully shot, there is a great dose of fiction here in that it’s hardly likely a man in his 30s would for example get round her parents so easily (of course how much of this is true to Lynn Barber’s memoir I can’t say). In other words An Education is a film for art's sake and one most nostalgia freaks and Francophiles alike will lap up (if only for the weekend in Paris which is vividly shot, like one of those sixties LIFE books). The period detail is excellent throughout.
Much has been made of Mulligan’s performance and sure enough she is both classy and natural. But with so much of the perfect life that has been easily gifted to Jenny, the film’s genteel nature masks an ominous undercurrent - when it first rears its head the audient feels every agony as Jenny’s naivety uncovers the truths of her dream man.
Fans of Nick Hornby won’t be disappointed either. His screenplay is unmistakably Hornby and very English. There is some funny dialogue about the French and some equally cutting satire in the discussions between Jenny and Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) and the Headmistress, played by an always superb Emma Thompson.
Now that the rain has ended our Indian summer, the cinema is a perfect destination and An Education imbues the senses with an autumnal Englishness worth seeing even if you’re not a Francophile.