Review of the film An Education

It’s raining heavily as Jenny carries her cello to the bus stop and waits. The 16 year old English girl is drenched, as is the case holding her instrument. A handsome man in his 30s stops his beautiful red sports car to ask if, as a true music lover, he can at least give her cello a lift so the downpour doesn’t ruin the wood. The movie is called An Education, and it is set in the early 60s in the London suburbs. Jenny is bored with her life. The young woman, precocious and inquisitive, bound for Oxford, walks alongside the car for a while and they chat. Soon she is in the passenger seat smiling and laughing as the rain stops just before they reach her house. Jenny is obsessed with pop culture and yearns for a more sophisticated existence. David offers this to her. So begins a seemingly idyllic relationship in which he takes her out to hear classical music, dance at nightclubs, see and talk about beautiful art and spend weekends in the country or Paris. He charms her father, a man obsessed with status and wealth. He brings her mother gifts and flatters her. Both seem unsuspecting of an older man’s motives towards an under-aged girl. He seems like the perfect older gentleman, but his ingratiating demeanor does little to belie his true nature, which becomes more apparent the more time Jenny spends with him and the more curious and strange many of his actions become.

            It ends badly, as these things are always likely to do. It is not at all surprising, but that does not make the story any less sincere, and we watch as Jenny copes. Despite the tears she sheds, the experience has been good for her. “We feel old after we’ve lived through a charade.” But it wasn’t as if she didn’t welcome David’s deceptions and the goods that they allowed him to offer her. Jenny may have been naïve, but she is still smart and strong; what she has been through she will use to better her life. Her relationship with David has been a catalyst for her to figure out what it is she truly wants. She is lucky for the chance. Perhaps this is why I so wanted to and did identify with Jenny: She did not let a seemingly devastating experience slow her down. She cried, took stock and moved on, chalking it up to an education.

We have all had those moments where our lives may have been drastically different based on one piece of knowledge. This film finds that moment in one young woman’s story and shows us how she comes to a life-altering decision. An Education is based on a memoir by the British journalist Lynn Barber. It became well known that in her youth she had an affair with a much older man during the 1960s. The movie is beautifully produced and directed and the performances are all wonderful, especially Carey Mulligan as Jenny, who became a star upon its release. She makes us root for Jenny. And in the end, we know, as an intelligent and thoughtful young woman, that she will be all right.