An Education (Monday, October 12, 2009) (148)

This film tells the story of a precocious teenage girl in England in the early 1960s who befriends an older man who purports to be a cultural dilettante and professional man of international esteem. The girl and both her parents fall in love with the guy and she decides to quit high school and begin her new life as a woman of leisure. She gets so caught up in the romance of her own story that she loses track of her goals and gets burned when she finds that the man was not entirely forthright with her about his situation. God - even writing a three-sentence summary of the story makes me want to doze off to sleep. The story is completely banal and the film is as exciting as the foggy gray atmosphere of the London setting.

Cary Mulligan in the lead role of Jenny is a wise girl who has a very nice and attractive demeanor. Her performance is good overall, but the dialogue she is given is terrible. She constantly speaks in half-French phrases and then banal English cliches. Not a fault of the acting at all, but rather the script, she does not seem to fit well into the era that the movie is set - as she constantly talks back to her parents and teachers in a particularly modern way. Peter Saarsgaard as the love interest, David, has one of the all-time terrible English accents here. It's hard to pay attention to his performance or the character because the accent is so distractingly bad.

One thing that comes off strangely (that might just be my contemporary prudishness coming out) is how there is not a single character who ever questions the appropriateness of a 16 year-old girl dating a man in his mid-30s and travelling around the country (and Paris) with him. I guess one could say 'times were different then' - but still, there should have been a teacher or parent asking if it was right for the couple to date (to which she could have replied, 'Oh - don't be such a prude' in a bratty tone).

On top of this problem, is the more central question of what David's motives are in sweeping Jenny off her feet. His intentions are never explored at all. Early on, he seems excited by the girl's excitement for him, and then later he seems rather turned on by her virginity and sexual adventurousness. But why he sticks around so long is never really examined. Is he really in love with her? It seems like a stretch to think he is. Aside from the puerile lust he might have for such a young girl, she doesn't seem to offer him much. She is clearly more in lust with him and fools herself into thinking it's love.

This is yet another case of the historical truth of the story getting in the way of a compelling narrative. The fact that this is based on an alleged true story gets in the way of a cohesive structure. I have to imagine all of the events here actually occurred, but they don't make a good movie. The story is totally cliche and the characters are so two-dimensional they almost recede into the beige wallpaper.

Stars: 1 of 4