Gateway Cinephiles

StLIFF 2009: Day One

An Education
2009 (UK)
Director: Lone Scherfig

An Education is a fairly conventional coming-of-age-story that is enlivened and elevated by abundant, magnificent acting.  To be sure, Nick Hornby’s screenplay boasts plenty of cheek and a canny, understated awareness of its early 1960s British setting.  Meanwhile, director Lone Scherfig operates in a mode that is comfortable with melodrama and also assured enough to toss aside its emotional excesses.  Scherfig permits her narrative’s most pivotal developments to unfold off-screen, but her commanding storytelling ensures that the film never misses a beat.  Everything we need to know is up there.  That said, An Education would probably have been nothing more than an old story–girl falls for charming cad, girl gets burned, girl moves on–told quite well.  It would have, that is, if not for a plethora of dazzling performances.  Carey Mulligan is almost spookily well-cast as ambitious and dissatisfied teen Jenny, but equally vital are Peter Sarsgaard in a challenging role as her creepy, oddly vulnerable, and (much) older paramour, and an engrossing Alfred Molina, proving yet again that his best characters are usually well-meaning boobs. Heck, Rosamund Pike deserves praise for lending texture to her ditsy playgirl almost entirely through sideways glances and glum expressions.