An Education

UK 2009, 94 minutes
Dir. Lone Scherfig
English
Rating: [M]
Genres: Drama / Youth, Romance, Female-centric

Topics: Period 1960s, Rites-of-passage.

Feat. Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams, Rosamund Pike, Sally Hawkins, Dominic Cooper, Emma Thompson

Aroview: An assured and alluring coming-of-age drama set in swinging sixties London (1961 in fact), with teenage ingenue Carey Mulligan falling in love with an older playboy.

She sees him as her ticket out of the staid British suburbia and into a world of high art, jazz clubs, and French exoticism, and as such the film plays as a kitchen sink drama fused with 60's glamour, ala BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S. Screenwriter Nick Hornby (ABOUT A BOY) gets a sensitive handle on the memoir of Lynn Barber, and dir. Scherfig fashions it as a tantalizing nostalgia piece, but it's the magnetic, career-making performance from Carey Mulligan that makes this a treasure. She's well matched too, by American Peter Sarsgaard, who convincingly adopts an English preppie charm.

NZ International Film Festival 2009