"AN EDUCATION" Rates a Solid A-

[Carl M. Zapffe]

"AN EDUCATION" ('09) ...  The young, previously unknown actress Carey Mulligan is a revelation as she lights up the screen in a breakout performance as a British high school student. Miss Mulligan is actually 24 years old, but you would never know that in this film where she is absolutely convincing in her heartfelt portrayal of a senior in high school who is swept off her feet by a much older man. 

The year is 1962, and Jenny Mellor is a smart, talented, and ambitious senior in high school who is being egged on by her parents to excel in her studies so that she can get into Oxford and escape her working class roots. While naturally gifted, Jenny has trouble with Latin and she finds much of her other studies to be by rote drudgery. Neither her parents nor her teachers can explain with conviction why schoolwork is so important for her future success in life. Success at what, she wonders, in an era when opportunities for women were still relatively limited. 

Far too often the fallback answer from her adult teachers and parents is so that she can marry well. With this weak rationale in mind, Jenny is understandably swept off her feet when David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), a man twice her age, befriends her and offers her an exciting life of luxury and privilege including fine dining and nightclub hopping without having to worry about the mundane aspects of schoolwork. He pretends to her parents that he is mentoring her, and his cloak of respectability impresses them to the point where they drop their initial misgivings.

We know that this can't end well and that nothing good can come from this relationship no matter how glamorous it may appear. Jenny is blind to the fact that no man in his thirties should find a relationship with an innocent girl of high school age appealing. Every parent who watches this film knows instinctively that Goldman can't be as good as he initially appears, and throughout this film his true colors are slowly revealed to show his truly despicable nature.  

Among its many other fine qualities, the beauty of this film is in its pacing of the development of the character of David Goldman as the pivotal character in the story. Sarsgaard portrays this slime ball to perfection with a sophisticated charm that masks his villainy until it oozes out at little moments here and there in a powerful and unsettling performance.

This semi-autobiographical tale, written by Lynn Barber with a script adapted by Nick Hornby, has been beautifully brought to the silver screen by Danish director, Lone Scherfig. Scherfig, a member of the Dogma school of minimalist film making, is also notable for her 2000 charmer, "Italian for Beginners." Barber has commented that her personal experiences are much like Jenny's, and for much of her life they have caused her to lose her trust in other people.

Standout performances all around include that by Olivia Williams as Miss Stubbs, a teacher who maintains her faith in Jenny. Alfred Molina also stands out as Jenny's dad, a man who has good intentions, but not much in the way of fatherly common sense. Dominic Cooper portrays a close friend and a business partner of David Goldman, and for once he is the less sleazy of the two with a somewhat happy marriage to Helen (Rosamund Pike), a ditzy, shallow blond who serves wonderfully as his arm candy. 

My one complaint about this movie is its undercurrent of anti-Semitism. Goldman starts off the relationship with an announcement out of the blue that he is a Jew. At another point, a veiled reference is made about "those people." Several other references are also made. The implication seems that his disreputable business dealings and his many other character flaws might be ascribed to his religion, which is, of course, utter nonsense. I will grant that attitudes like this were common to that era, but my point here is that a movie like this should have had a script where Goldman's religion remains unmentioned since it is completely unnecessary to the plot. Other than that, this is a very fine, although troubling movie. (Grade A-, See it.)

Carl M. Zapffe,

The Cat's Meow Movie Critic

http://www.catsmeowmoviecritic.com