Based on a memoir by tricksy society journalist Lynn Barber and penned by Nick Hornby, An Education has fun while exploring the downside of sexual liberation in swinging sixties London.
In a star-making performance, remarkable newcomer Carey Mulligan plays a bright, precocious schoolgirl who abandons her efforts to get into Oxford when a chance encounter with slick Jewish businessman Peter Sarsgaard opens up an impossibly glamorous world of nightclubs, Parisian shopping and art.
Sarsgaard similarly charms his way into Ms. Mulligan’s home. Her status-fixated dad (Alfred Molina, wonderful) who has spent years training his daughter as an Oxford candidate suddenly puts aside all academic ambitions in support of a possible good marriage. Concerned teachers Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams stand helplessly by. You can see the sticky end coming: this is, after all, the document of a highly inappropriate relationship between a 16 year-old and a slumlord. But director Lone Scherfig keeps the chatter lively and mood upbeat long after his heroine’s prospects have been dented. Nick Hornby’s screenplay gives the super supporting cast – Rosamund Pike, Dominic Cooper – plenty to work with.