After two affectionate filmic glimpses into the turbulent late Sixties – The Boat that Rocked and Taking Woodstock – An Education took me back slightly further, to pre-hippy England in 1961. Based on a memoir and scripted by Nick Hornby with his usual flair for dialogue, the film gently tackles the onset of feminism.
Sixteen-year-old Jenny, studying hard at an all-girl school to get to Oxford, the high-pressure goal set by her domineering father (played brilliantly by Alfred Molina), stumbles upon David, an hypnotically alluring man a decade older. We sense immediately that silken David (Peter Sarsgaard does a remarkable job with this role, managing to be both repellent and sympathetic at the same time), an urbane, fun-loving man with a mysterious occupation, is trouble, but the subtle script of An Education offers plenty of early tension. Director Lone Scherfig (who made the wonderful, rarely sighted Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself in 2002) renders the times – gaudy rebellion contrasted with remnants of straitlaced moralism – with a graceful touch.
All in all, An Education has all the hallmarks of a fine film and it captured me totally during its first half. Unfortunately, despite a surprise or two, Hornby’s script then begins to peter out (the underpinning memoir might account for this) to a clumsy climax and flick-of-the-wrist denouement. And the themes at play – the subjugation of women, hedonism versus happiness – are explored so shallowly that I left the cinema sorely let down.