An Education (2009)

VERDICT:
7/10 Lessons Learned

Tip-top acting, but everything else feels all too familiar.

An Education is about a cultured, yet sheltered 16 year-old girl in England that develops a relationship of sorts with a man roughly twice her age who indulges her in the finer things in life. He presents her with a future filled with things you can’t learn in books, a future that doesn’t require her to conform to everyone else’s expectations for her to go to Oxford and study English, and that’s when things start to get serious.

So that’s the pickle, shack up with Humbert Humbert or go it the easy route. Granted, the girl is really into art and classical music and such, but I don’t know, I think I’d be more inclined to just go to college. College was awesome. College had beer.

Miller High Life, baby. Talk about the finer things in life.

Anyway, An Education‘s premise isn’t exactly breaking new ground. It’s a “you live, you learn” story, you’ve probably heard it before, only this time it’s got a bourgeois flair and a suspect romance. Well, that and the fact that it’s based off the autobiographical memoirs of one Lynn Barber. Thanks to this aspect, the movie as a whole ends up carrying more weight than it would have if it had been straight up fiction and the age difference between the two leads is easier to shake being that it’s not just there to be weird.

But true or not, this “Haven’t I seen this before?” vibe is the big thing that held this movie back for me. The script, though well-written by Nick Hornby (as usual), doesn’t really shed light on the subject in a way I’d never heard or read or seen it before. It’s not a bad story in the least, it’s just old hat by now and for all the things the movie does well in other areas, I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed by it all.

But then there’s the acting, and the acting is darn good. The big mention goes to newcomer Carey Mulligan as our naive little gold digger, Jenny. The one word that I kept coming back to while watching Mulligan and thinking about why she’s getting so much buzz was none other than “lovely”. Maybe that’s just me trying to sound British or something, but there’s a very refreshing quality about her that makes you want to keep watching and keeps you invested, old chaps. She brings an air of level-headed maturity to Jenny that makes her character credible without making her childish. It’s all Carey and it’s all these qualities that not only make her more of an adult than her own father – and that’s not just because her father’s kind of an idiot – but also make her a strong protagonist.

Never seen Mulligan before, but let me tell ya’, she’s got some chops. Not really sure who’s gonna take Best Actress this year, but I’d be happy to see her walk away with it.

And I liked Peter Sarsgaard as our snappy rhino, David, but my good buddy Fred posed a good question, “Has he ever played a role where he wasn’t a huge creep?” Can’t say that I’ve made my way through the Peter Sarsgaard collection, but, yeah, he’s definitely got this go-to creep thing down at the moment. But the thing he does well is that he doesn’t make your skin crawl like a sexual predator and there’s this elegant, endearing mystique about him that draws you in just as it does Jenny. Good job on his part and I bet he’s a swell guy in real life, totally not a creep.

Alfred Molina‘s also worth mentioning as Jenny’s idiot father. Dude’s a good actor to begin with and fits the overprotective paternal role like a glove.

Managed to walk into this one blind without any real idea what it was about or what to expect aside from its Oscar nominations, and while that always makes my day, I thought I’d be a bit more bowled over by this one than I ended up being. Wouldn’t put An Education in my Top Ten of ’09, but thanks to a host of solid performances by a wonderful little cast, the finished product that would have otherwise landed itself a 5 or so was ultimately a satisfying one.

Cheerio, then!