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closeWednesday, Oct. 28, 2009
Carey Mulligan of 'An Education' should go to the head of the class
Sony Pictures Classics
SCHOOLED: Carey Mulligan and Peter Sarsgaard Sony Pictures Classics
An Education
***
PG-13 (sexual content, smoking); 95 min.
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 (Mulligan) 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 naïve 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 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 (played by Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike). Jenny’s parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour), who should be sending up alarms, find themselves just as charmed by the older man and allow the affair to progress.
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. Between his wobbly British accent and his decidedly flaccid sex appeal, he comes off as a twerp — you never quite understand what Jenny sees in this guy.
The role calls for someone at once slicker and more sexually forthright (Jude Law immediately leaps to mind). 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.
Exclusive: Angelika Dallas
— Christopher Kelly
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