An Education

I think the thing I like most about Jenny (Carey Mulligan), the restless heroine of An Education, is how representative she is of a certain type of brainy teenager. Jenny, who lives in suburban London with her parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour), thinks she's worldly and sophisticated (she peppers her conversation with pretentious bits of French). She thinks her parents are oh-so-bourgeois (indeed, they sort of are). She thinks that her life hasn't really started yet-but maybe it will when she finally goes to Oxford.

She is, in a way, the perfect mark for David (Peter Sarsgaard), a conspicuously charming, much older (and Jewish!) man who slowly ingratiates himself into her life. How can she resist his sleek sports car, his glamorous friends (Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper), his jet-setting ways? Soon enough, she's going to museums and concerts with him, taking trips to Paris, and falling into his bed.

So where, you might ask, are her parents during all of this? They are equally flattered by David's attention. One of the clever insights of An Education is that even the most fuddy-duddyish of folks secretly aspire to a glittering life. When David lies about knowing C.S. Lewis, they are dutifully impressed. "It's one thing to be a writer," says Jenny's dad. "But to know a writer."

Sarsgaard plays David as oily, but not too oily. We can see how appealing he is-and we can tell that he's genuinely fond of Jenny. But something doesn't smell right. The film gives us clues, saving the real revelation about David for the coda.

Still, even if David is completely upstanding, the film asks the question: Should Jenny really consider marrying this man and giving up Oxford? Her teacher (a touching Olivia Williams) is mortified. "If you don't go to Oxford," she says, "you'll break my heart." But Jenny makes a compelling counter argument: Why not skip the school part and go straight to a life of museums and concerts and world travel?

And Jenny's dad, once completely obsessed with his daughter's admittance to Oxford, is suddenly keen on the idea of a marriage between Jenny and David. Turns out, for a girl in 1960s England, an education is more about finding a good husband than any sort of intellectual edification.

[To read my full review of An Education, check out the December issue of Baltimore.]