The Sensuous Revolt: An Education

Sixteen-year old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is predictably impressionable. Intelligence and the odd cutting remark might equip her for the classroom joust and parents in suburban Twickenham. But she has much growing up to do, something which is given encouragement with the arrival of London hustler, David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard). An Education, based on Lynn Barber’s memoir by that name, is exactly that, offering a few bitter realities for Jenny. Experience might well be, as Oscar Wilde proclaimed, another name for our mistakes.

Britain in the early 1961, where the film is set, comes across as a colourless void. The economy is still hobbled by a past of austerity. A girl approached by a charming, composed chap like David driving a Bristol sports car, is understandably bewitched. Money may not be able to buy love, but it does buy experience.

To the Londoner of the time, Paris was near enough to heaven. The Gallic-loving sentiment is hard to undervalue, whether it is a desire to listen to records by Juliette Greco or an aching longing for Chanel No. 5. The sensuous revolt is irresistible. There are ample numbers of drinks, chances at dressing up, and dabbling in less than scrupulous activities: chasing out old women who fear the invasion of ‘coloureds’ from former colonies; acquiring paintings at below cost, and having them resold at profit. These offer a world Jenny finds repellent and enchanting. Few questions are asked, and even fewer, given.

Nick Hornby’s sharp screenplay for this Lone Scherig-directed production has witty moments which draw out the engagement between the characters with warmth. This is impressive given the subject matter of forbidden love that tends to send modern audiences, and censors, into apoplectic fits.

David’s companions in crime are excellent foils to his smooth manner – Danny (Dominic Cooper) and the glamorous Helen (Rosamund Pike). Helen’s philistinism and downright daftness is charming (‘Latin will cease to be spoken in ‘Latin’ countries in due course.’) David’s character, played with sensitivity by Sarsgaard, is rendered with charm that makes him difficult to dislike. Parents and child are taken in by his roguish magic. Jenny abandons her final exams and the dreaming spires of Oxford.

Mulligan plays her character with almost too much maturity. Her barbed comments, well aimed at the dull authoritarians in school, fronted by the always formidable Emma Thompson, have their desired, crushing effect. Naughty, it would seem, is not often nice. Jenny realizes her miscalculations too late. As does David, whose enterprise at seduction backfires.

The story ends happily enough. The dry, wearisome pedagogues Jenny was quick to condemn rescue her from ruin, and order is restored to a disrupted cosmos. The audience is left satisfied that pleasure will have an important say in life, even if must retreat behind the veil of boring expectations at stages.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email: bkampmark@gmail.com

© Scoop Media