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closeWednesday, Oct. 28, 2009
Stellar lead performance gives 'An Education’ a better grade
'An Education' makes the grade on the strength of its newcomer lead.
Christopher Kelly
Carey Mulligan
The story of a teenage girl’s first blush with adult emotion, An Education is a coming-of-age story the likes of which you’ve seen many times before. It’s the marvelous lead performance by newcomer Carey Mulligan that sets the movie apart. As a schoolgirl in suburban London in the early 1960s, Jenny looks mousy and unremarkable — a tiny wisp of a thing. But when she dons evening clothes and pins her hair up, she transforms into a gamine beauty of the Audrey Hepburn school. Mulligan’s performance maintains a similar, exquisite balance: This is a heartfelt, wholly original portrait of a naive girl who yearns desperately to be wise beyond her years.
Based on Lynn Barber’s memoir (the screenplay adaptation is by About a Boy novelist Nick Hornby) and directed by Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners), An Education opens as Jenny is preparing for her A-levels, which will determine whether she gains entrance to schools such as Oxford or Cambridge. She’s a brainy, precocious girl, clearly a bit frustrated at her stuffy all-girls school. Enter David (Peter Sarsgaard), a mysterious older man who sweeps Jenny off her feet and introduces her to his swinging world of nightclubs, art auctions and glamorous friends.
The problem with An Education isn’t so much that it follows a predictable path — you know the second you meet him that David is going to turn out to be a scoundrel — as that Sarsgaard isn’t quite suited to his role. Mulligan holds your attention to the end, but the "education" here finally feels a little elementary: You don’t need a degree from Oxford to know that you shouldn’t date a slimy, vaguely effete guy in his late 30s. Christopher Kelly
At the Angelika in Dallas; opens Nov. 13 at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
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