STUDIO: Sony | DIRECTOR: Lone Scherfig | STARS: Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper, Olivia Williams, Emma Thompson
RELEASE DATE: 3/30/2010 | PRICE: DVD$28.96, Blu-ray
$38.96
BONUSES: commentary, deleted scenes, two featurettes
SPECS: PG-13 | 100 min. | Romance drama | 2.35:1 widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1 | English and French subtitlesRATINGS (out of 5): Movie
| Audio
Carey Mulligan (The Greatest), a 24-year-old British actress, came from obscurity to an Academy Award nomination for her tour-de-force performance in the involving, well-written drama An Education.
Set in Twickingham, a suburb of London in 1961, the film stars Mulligan as Jenny, a goody two-shoes private school girl with aspirations of attending Oxford. She plays cello and is good with her studies, but longs for a more exciting life—in Paris, perhaps—than the path mapped out for her. She finds refuge under the tutelage—and, eventually, in the arms of—David (Peter Sarsgaard, Knight and Day)—a Jewish sophisticate in his 30s who, along with his free-wheeling, closest friends (Dominic Cooper of Tamara Drewe, Rosamund Pike of Made in Dagenham) shows Jenny a world of art, drinking, jazz, and fancy cigarettes. Eventually, he also teaches Jenny about sex and heartbreak.
This is a fairly simple story, based on a book
Mulligan has the difficult task of keeping her sunny disposition and resiliency up throughout despite the forces that rail against her (including socially conscious father Alfred Molina of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice) and projecting a sense of awkwardness, adventurousness and desire. And Sarsgaard proves once again he is one of the most chameleon-like character actors working, delivering a perfect British accent this time out, while everyone else is perfectly cast.
Unfortunately, An Education falters towards its finale, reaching its conclusion in a rushed manner after a surprising revelation about a lead character. It also rings up questions about anti-semitism that it never fully delves into and answers. But for a seemingly small scale coming-of-age film that tackles big, emotional themes, An Education is an intimate charmer with a tough shell around it.
Although the movie is the highlight, the DVD is packed with special features.
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I commented on this on the general film page, but do have to add here I agree about the scope: it’s a movie that implies without really dealing with some fairly big issues (after all, this was a time of huge seismic shifts in cultural and generational awareness, yet this remains, ultimately, a purely personal story, and yet told at such a remove that it’s oddly detached). It’s charming, it’s appealingly unsentimental, but I’m content to have watched it as an inflight movie and would watch it again on TV, but I’m not sure without lots of interesting extras I’d invest in it.