THE STORY – Despite her sheltered upbringing, Jenny is a teen with a bright future; she’s smart, pretty, and has aspirations of attending Oxford University. When David, a charming but much older suitor, motors into her life in a shiny automobile, Jenny gets a taste of adult life that she won’t soon forget.
THE CAST – Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams & Emma Thompson
THE TEAM – Lone Scherfig (Director) & Nick Hornby (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 100 Minutes
Lone Scherfig’s “An Education” isn’t just a story about growing up – it’s about waking up. It’s about waking up and discovering the harsh realities of life, things often learned far too late. Set in 1961 London, a time just on the cusp of the cultural and feminist revolution, the film slips us into the shoes of 16-year-old Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a clever, ambitious schoolgirl with her eyes on Oxford but whose heart gets set on something more. What unfolds is a bittersweet, sharply rendered tale of seduction. Not just of the romantic kind but the seduction of intellectual and artistic desires.
From the moment David (Peter Sarsgaard) pulls up in his sleek sports car next to Jenny under the pouring rain, humorously offering her cello a lift, the film immerses us in a world where charm masks manipulation and sophistication shrouds secrets. Jenny is instantly enchanted by a man who seems to have been everywhere and seen everything. She’s fascinated by art in all forms, French music, and New Wave film, in particular, and David is someone she can have stimulating conversations with about all the things that her strict father (Alfred Molina) forbids her from indulging in. David, suave and enigmatic, seems to understand her in ways no one else does. And it isn’t hard to understand why Jenny is so drawn to him. Through Mulligan’s luminous performance, we feel how intoxicating David’s world is, with its wealth of art, fancy restaurants, and jazz clubs. For someone on the cusp of womanhood, trying to live under the strict gaze of her father, David represents freedom. The life she thought she had to earn through essays and exams at Oxford is suddenly hers for the taking.
But what makes “An Education” more than a cautionary tale is its refusal to simply paint Jenny as naïve or David as purely predatory. Because the film is based on a memoir by journalist Lynn Barber, it carries a personal element with it. Through Nick Hornby’s screenplay, the audience and the film know that this situation is perverse from one perspective, but because we stay in Jenny’s perspective, we understand the allure. There’s a thrill to the risk, a thrill to the mystery of David, and a thrill to the lifestyle he lives, even if it’s all an illusion. Jenny is a teenager who wants to be treated like a grown-up. She wants everything that suddenly seems to be in easy reach. The film’s backdrop – early ’60s Britain – gives extra weight to Jenny’s temptations. Girls like her were expected to marry well, not think deeply. Oxford was a ticket out. But why waste time studying Latin when you could be walking the streets of Paris? David gives her the cheat sheet for the game of life, but you can only cheat for so long.
Mulligan’s Jenny carries a wide-eyed wonder at the excitement over this new life. Her performance walks a tightrope of precocious intelligence and emotional vulnerability, reminding us just how fast a teenager can be thrust into adult disillusionment. You see Jenny grow up so quickly that you forget she’s just a 16-year-old kid who needs to get home and do her homework. Everyone, even Jenny, forgets that. Sarsgaard’s David is all soft-voiced duplicity, and the cast around the pair, with British acting heavyweights like Dominic Cooper as his friend Danny, Rosamund Pike as Danny’s girlfriend Helen, and Emma Thompson as Jenny’s school principal, adds texture to the moral complexity. Even Jenny’s parents, shockingly easy to sway, aren’t caricatures but symptoms of a society that prioritizes appearances and security over a girl’s autonomy.
The film is incredibly stylish, with a shimmy-shake score of ’60s pop, dreamy Paris sequences, and vintage glamour, but all undercut by the creeping sense that something is off. As Jenny falls deeper into David’s world, school becomes an afterthought, and she begins to lose her grip on the future she dreamed of. There’s a cost to chasing a fantasy, and by the time Jenny realizes it, she’s already paid in part. She learns there are no shortcuts. Not for women in this world.
“An Education” captures the ache of first love but also the sting of first betrayal. It’s about the things unsaid, the dangers of what’s hidden, and the kind of learning no classroom can prepare you for. It’s about the young women who had to find their way through a world not built for them and who learned, often the hard way, to define their own future.
