On Monday, my history prof asked if anyone had seen the movie, An Education. I eagerly put my hand up but no one else wanted to join the party. He asked me if I liked it, and I said it was creepy. He looked at me as if I had two heads and told the class, "Don't listen to her! It's a wonderful movie" While my prof and many critics seemed to have been charmed by the sorta-cute-sorta-totally-creepy flick, I'm can't say I'd give the Nick Hornby tale (I gave the man my heart with High Fidelity and About a Boy, and he gives me this?) a top grade. Except, maybe in utter sketchiness.
An Education seems like a text-book example of a movie I'd love. The story follows Jenny (played by Carey Mulligan), a Brit teen who dreams of living the life of an intellectual at Oxford. She's book smart, speaking French at the drop of a hat and referencing Camus over after school snacks, but she's yet to really get out in the social world. Enter, David, a charming man (played by the strangely off-putting Peter Sarsgaard). He takes her to clubs, buys her expensive perfume, showers her with flowers, whisks her to Paris and wins over her parents. I know, sounds like a cute coming-of-age flick right? It's not.
You see, David, is 30 and Jenny is 16. Perhaps I'm more conservative than I thought, but this particular May-December romance really weirded me out. I'm talking, I-was-squirming-in-my-seat weirded out. I love me some Sarsgaard, but the man just came out as a sketchy creeper from beginning to end for me. Whenever he and Jenny had a sensual moment, it got really uncomfortable for me - most notably when he suggests jokingly (I hope) that she try having sex with a banana before they actually do the deed (I'm serious).
It doesn'thelp that Jenny looks young. The older-man-beds-virginal-girl shtick (eww) might have worked better if Mulligan looked like most other girls in teen flicks, at least 24. But unlike those other too-mature-to-be-in-high-school stars, she looks like the 16-year-old she's supposed to be playing. And apparently, that's okay, because no one in the movie or in my theatre seemed to be as uncomfortable as I was with her relationship with David. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but a grown man should not be flirting with, let alone fondling, a girl who is still in high school. I don't care how mature she is mentally. It's just weird.
I'm sure people could argue that the whole scenario fits the time period, where parents would accept any suitor, young or old, who would marry and take care of their daughter. While I respect the director's efforts to preserve the decade's morals and mentalities, I still can't think of the movie without feeling slightly icky. I don't know if that will ever change.
Despite all my grumblings about the awkward love story, I have to say there were quite a few parts of An Education that I absolutely loved. For instance, the costumes were beautiful. Even when Jenny was supposed to be looking dowdy, she looked radiant, rocking an endless array of cute floral empire-waisted dresses and perfectly quaffed bee-hive dos. Her style reminded me of my favourite retro-styled ladies, Zooey Deschanel and Kate Nash. If you are like Mad Men simply because of the delicious vintage frocks Peggy and Joan wear, you will love this movie.
Even if she didn't look ridiculously cute, I would have loved Jenny, simply because Mulligan is fantastic. She's in her 20s but she convinced me that she was an innocent and impressionable cello-playing teacher's pet. She really does a great job of expressing the emotional roller coaster of being a teenage girl. One minute she's all smiles and the next, she's bawling her eyes out. I'm sure she'll be a contender for the golden guy come February.
Mood Music: "Rosyln" by Bon Iver & St. Vincent
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