The Fundy Film Society

An Education

Winner of the audience award at Sundance (2009), An Education comes with a fantastic pedigree. Director Lone Scherfig is the gifted Danish filmmaker behind such features as Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and Just Like Home, and the film’s screenwriter is the ever-popular Nick Hornby, whose earlier books, including About a Boy and High Fidelity, have already been turned into highly successful films.

Set in London, England, in the early sixties, An Education is a gorgeous and nuanced coming-of-age tale with a superb fable-like quality. Relatively new to acting, Carey Mulligan turns in a luminous performance as Jenny, and has already been compared to Audrey Hepburn in this role. Jenny is a student with a great will and ambition to match. She’s off to Oxford to prep for college and plans to take over the world, when she, well, meets a boy.

Actually, to be precise, a man. David (Peter Sarsgaard, Jarhead, Rendition) is dashing, older and seemingly perfect – at least to Jenny. She falls head over heels in love with him, and very soon is utterly entranced by the life he is about to give her. Thoughts of school fly out the window. Of course, nothing works out that perfectly and smoothly in life, and before long her romance comes crashing down, forcing Jenny to wonder who she really was when she began this crazy journey, and what is left of her now as she realizes she must begin anew.

The plotline alone does not account for the truly impeccable tone of this film – it never misses a mark as it explores its sensitive subject matter and fully rounds out its very compelling main characters. Rarely does a film evoke an era so thoroughly and thoughtfully as An Education does, plunging viewers right into the world of this gloriously rendered love affair gone awry.