 "Photo: allmoviephoto.com")
 "Photo: allmoviephoto.com")
For a film that takes place in suburban London during the ’60s, Lone Scherfig’s An Education feels as relevant and necessary as any movie about today’s generation of young adults. It’s what Post Grad could have been, were it made for intelligent people.
The movie is charming and funny, but it’s also deceptively meaningful. Although An Education is technically a period piece, subtle societal parallels reveal just how clever the film really is.
Carey Mulligan plays a 16-going-on-17-year-old named Jenny, who, under the strict (but hilarious) guidance of her father, aspires to attend Oxford University. Like the rainy, perpetual autumn that the movie inhabits, Jenny’s life is drab and mundane.
Jenny dreams of visiting Paris and discovering French art, but her hopes are constantly drowned in Latin homework, cello practice and her father’s lectures. That is, until she meets David, played by Peter Sarsgaard, a 20-something Jewish playboy who introduces Jenny to the world of cocktail parties, jazz clubs and life sans-hymen.
Unsurprisingly, being a socialite is appealing to Jenny, and though viewers might feel tempted to slap some sense into her when she considers dropping out of school and marrying a man 10 years her senior, it is hard to deny that she has been offered a pretty nice deal.
As Jenny’s own parents and teachers concede, there aren’t many opportunities for women in the English workforce during the 1960s. Even the headmistress at Jenny’s school admits that her education will offer her few professional options outside of teaching.
So it makes sense when Jenny wonders aloud “What is the point?” It’s a perfectly valid question that no one in the movie ever successfully answers, making David’s proposal seem like the perfect solution.
“What’s the point?” is a question that lots of people have been wondering lately. On the one hand, young adults can spend thousands of dollars on a college education that will ultimately land them in a shaky job market (with no Chicago Olympics to look forward to). Or they can skip the hassle and go into public works with the hope of banking on some of that fancy Obama money paving American roads and lubricating America’s dreams.
The pacing in An Education is confusingly fast at times, but this must have been a directorial decision to expedite Jenny’s growing experience. She discovers over the course of the film that nothing in life comes easy, and for a generation plagued with haughty feelings of entitlement, this is a lesson today’s youth desperately needs to learn.
Unlike the summer’s recessionploitation flop Post Grad, An Education has characters that are actually realistic. They are accountable for their actions and the best opportunities aren’t the ones that just fall into their laps. Although Jenny might try to avoid her responsibilities, she eventually realizes that she actually needs to work hard for happiness.
An Education doesn’t slap audiences across the face with its social commentary. On the surface, it’s a cute and heartbreaking story of first love. With a star cast to support the film’s fragile heroine, there’s hardly a dull moment despite all the annoying, untranslated French slang.
The film is based on a memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber, which was adapted for the screen by novelist Nick Hornby. Hornby, who wrote the books High Fidelity and About a Boy is no stranger to coming-of-age stories. But for a man whose last work was the book Fever Pitch, An Education marks his return to thought-provoking territory.
An Education will open at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema at 2828 N. Clark St. on Friday, Oct. 23.
Be the first to comment on this article!