Some comments on the 2009 film 'An Education'

SYNOPSIS


Jenny ( Carey Mulligan) a very bright girl on the cusp of her 17th birthday, finds herself in a whirlwind romance with the much older David ( Peter Sarsgaard). Prior to meeting him, Jenny was working hard at secondary school to ensure getting to Oxford University.

When she sees the lifestyle David can provide, one she never imagined could be hers, she's hooked and thoughts of Oxford are forgotten. Then, when things are looking pretty good for Jenny with the dashing ( yet a little too smooth) David, the truth hits her like a ton of bricks.

Jenny goes from being a bright eyed school girl and a sophisticated young lady, all the way back to questioning if she really knows who she is at all.

'An Education' won the Audience Choice award and the Cinematography award at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.

COMMENT

Strange and challenging film for those of us who stood in the rain at bus stops in our (tidy)school uniforms in the early 1960s, clutching schoolbags full of Latin 'O' Level texts ('Nisus erat custos portae ..'), alternately giddy or terrified at the prospects of Oxbridge.

While the fag end of wartime recovery and the longing for glamour is well-portrayed, it doesn't quite catch the terror of pregnancy that pervaded the lives of teenage girls - and the equal repressions and heady drives of their nylon-stocking top seeking boyfriends.

This was a weary and exhausted time when the exercise of back-biting morality provided a possible relief for ageing parents and teachers who had suffered terror and deprivation - followed by a meaningless grind to make a living in a grey economy.

And the Bristol car! Prominent in my memory as a car like this was driven by Melancy Chambers, the owner of the farm that we tenanted. What a presence! A gruff but not unkindly dyke who was utterly fearless fox hunting - riding side-saddle across heavy post and rail fences and unkempt hawthorn hedges.

I can't quite believe the image that the film creates of innocence, followed by relatively untroubled naughtiness and quiet reckoning. Perhaps that is all that younger members of the audience can grasp.

And it was not the Paris that I knew. Sleeping out on a park bench near Notre Dame on the way to Orleans, my situation was checked out by a kindly gendarme. I asked whether there was a place in gaol where I could sleep. He sighed heavily and replied that all the spaces had already been filled by 'filles' (prostitutes) and Algerians.

So much went on under the surface. Even body language was muted - and heaven help those who broke ranks and called things as they really were. No film can really capture that.