Carey Mulligan passes the test

The new Audrey Hepburn arrives

By Mildred Pierce

MUN Cinema Series

This film is a totally delightful Sundance award-winning exercise in unholy seduction – a hugely refreshing spin on what is normally considered an unsavoury subject. An Education is a movie about an older man who stalks and seduces a 16-year-old girl, but there isn’t a creepy moment to be felt: Bravo for such sweet release. It’s 1961 and the Western world is spinning in a new direction. Women are still chattel, sure, but they are starting to look different. Jackie O’s hair is on everyone’s heads and London, where the film is so lovingly set, is coming alive with new continental ways. Carey Mulligan does an amazing turn as the 16-year-old Jenny whose parents are pushing her to Oxford. Peter Sarsgaard plays David, the questionably charming suitor, with equal aplomb. You can’t be a scoundrel if you’re not first a charmer. He could talk the rust off a handlebar, even persuading Jenny’s stuffy parents of his earnest designs and good will. Given the choice between studying hard or going to Paris with a suitcase full of Black Russian cigarettes, Jenny understandably opts for Door Number Two. The Oscar-nominated screenplay by Nick Hornby (High Fidelity) is based on the memoirs of British journalist Lynn Barber. When she was 16, she had a two-year affair with a man in his 30s named Simon. It reeks with authenticity. This is a loving, intimate, and sympathetic portrait of what happens to good young girls when they meet not-so-well meaning dirty rotten scoundrels. Let’s just call this a romantic comedy with an edge of realism. Utterly delightful. New it-girl and Best Actress Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan shows us what all the fuss is about in the award-winning drama, An Education, which is also nominated for Best Picture. Starring with the equally talented Sarsgaard, Mulligan plays the part of a young woman who gets an education she didn’t even know she wanted. Among other things, this very entertaining British-based film is an education in the social milieu of ‘60s London. Perhaps the distance in time allows us to accept more readily the somewhat sordid subject matter. Jenny is all of 16, a perky young woman in a school uniform and a probably excellent academic career at Oxford. All she has to do is ace her O-levels. Her parents, superbly played by top-drawer actors Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, are especially eager for her to succeed. Everything seems to be going according to plan, until what appears like an accidental encounter changes everything. Sarsgaard plays the dashing David, a considerably older man who pulls up to Jenny in his really cool car in a rain shower. What begins as an apparently innocent gesture turns by gentle and seductive twists into trips to the continent, and into weekends and fancy cocktails and nightclubs in the swinging London of the moment. Indeed, it becomes increasingly difficult for Jenny to justify studying for O-levels when there is so much glamour at her freshly polished fingertips. Jenny has small glimpses into the mysterious world of David’s activities but she is still too young to put all the pieces together. Besides, she is not so much in love with him as head over heels with the life he offers, a world far far away from the predictable meat and potatoes wholesomeness of her parents’ dinner table. An Education is so much fun on so many levels. A study in the slippery meaning of the word sophistication, it is also a sobering drama about social class and a wonderful treatment of the world of the playboy. Take a break from your formal education and check it out.

An Education plays Thursday, Feb. 25, at Empire Theatres Studio 12 in the Avalon Mall. Tickets are $9 for students and seniors, $10 regular admission. Tickets go on sale at 6:00 pm, show time is 7:00 pm.

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