- Labelling this movie as “a coming-of-age story” does a bit of a disservice to it since no one in their right mind should ever purposely see a coming-of-age story and this movie is so much better than that phrase conveys.
- I thought Carey Mulligan was quite fantastic as our protagonist, the Francophile school girl trapped in the boredom of pre-”guitar groups are on their way out” Britain. In another movie played by another actress, I’d probably hate the character: she makes a variety of obviously stupid decisions and normally I’d be sitting here bitching about the obviously phenomenally low opinion film makers have of teenage girls. But Jenny isn’t insipid or without redeeming qualities. She’s smart and while this manifests itself in her (and her father’s) relentless pursuit of an Oxford acceptance letter, she obviously also thirsts for knowledge and experience outside of academia. She’s a culture vulture and, and this is something I rarely have to say about teenage girls on screen, she’s interesting!
I was watching Juno again the other day and one of the things I like best about Juno is that she has her own interests that don’t have anything to do with anyone else but that she finds joy in sharing with other people. Jenny’s cut from the same cloth, getting fabulously excited when she finds out that David’s friend Danny also loves the pre-Raphaelites. (Sidebar: I fucking hate the pre-Raphaelites.) I perpetually have trouble finding characters I can tolerate or relate to on screen, let alone female characters, so it’s nice to find characters like this. I may have substituted Eugene Delacroix for pre-Raphaelites and British invasion rock for French pop when I was seventeen, but it’s ultimately the same thing.
Jenny is not hateful and I’m finding that to be a very rarefied commodity lately. I genuinely like this girl.
- I suppose at seventeen you’re not smart enough to know these things, but if a thirty-something man asks you to marry him? Chances are he’s not the kind of person you want to marry.
- Peter Sarsgaard* was good as David, the simultaneously conniving and developmentally arrested playboy who waltzes in and sweeps Jenny off her feet with promises of classical music performances, auctions, and vacations on the continent. Again, I suppose you’re not smart enough at seventeen to know these things, but if your boyfriend is playing your parents like cheap violins in order to manipulate them into letting you do what you want and even you realise he’s doing that, perhaps he’s not someone you should be with. Jenny has a rather spectacular meltdown in her headmistress’ office in which she spits out all her quintessentially teenage angst about wanting to have the freedom to pursue a lifestyle that affords her opportunities to smoke Russian cigarettes and read books for fun (!) instead of tucking herself away at university, which is literally the equivalent of death in her mind. The difference between Jenny and David, though, is that Jenny gets over herself and realises there are ways to experience those things without having to sacrifice everything else. David, of course, never gets this because he’s perpetually sixteen has never managed to find a way of doing what he wants without being exceedingly unethical about it.
* I used to get his last name mixed up with Stellan Skarsgård’s all the time so that they’d be Peter Skarsgård and Stellan Sarsgaard. I mention this only so I can write Skarsgård and thus mention the fabulousness that is Alexander Skarsgård. Everything comes back to True Blood, you see.
And as a friend of mine says, never trust a guy named Dave. So there’s that.
- Rosamund Pike was pretty hysterical as Danny’s somewhat vacant girlfriend. She walked a fine line between being conscious of being a socialite with no usage for the pursuit of knowledge — e.g. not understanding why anyone would read books or speak French for no reason other than because they can — and being someone missing more than a few brain cells who genuinely can’t fathom reading for pleasure. She could go either way in all of her scenes so I’m wondering what kind of direction was given to her.
- FABULOUS COSTUMES. 1955-1962 is probably just about my favourite period in history and this movie just fits right in there at the tail end. I want about 80% of the dresses worn in this movie. I want to learn how to apply black eyeliner like that. All coming-of-age stories have that fulcrum point where things go from black-and-white to glorious technicolour and setting this story in this time period serves the same function, with it being right on the cusp between sedate post-WWII malaise and, when it really comes down to it, Beatlemania. It’s funny, though, how I tend to prefer the side of history that is the overly repressed side. It’s like the American 1960s on film; I love the pre-JFK assassination stuff way more than I like anything that has to do with those damn hippies. Evidently I’m uptight.
- I thought the best scene was when Jenny, in a desperately stupid fit of needing-to-know, wanders down to David’s house only to encounter his wife and child coming out of the house. The scene is so, so short but it suddenly opens up all these other questions with just a few short lines of dialogue. You know that Ernest Hemingway story, the one that is only six words long? (“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”) It’s like that, where even though the wife only has perhaps three lines, you suddenly have a thousand other questions about the truly despicable nature of her husband and the appalling union that is their marriage. When she asked Jenny if she was “in the family way” and Jenny says no, it’s the “Good. It’s happened before,” line that is just killer. What is this guy about? It’s pretty sick and makes the earlier revelation that David is married look as benign as some kid owning up to breaking his mother’s favourite vase.
- Also, “in the family way” is a euphemism that totally needs to come back.
- The prostitute who gets a chainsaw dropped on her in American Psycho played the mother in this. This is the only thing I associate with this actress and thus must bring it up every time she appears somewhere. I’m sorry, lady.
- The Q&A wasn’t great, but I suppose the answers can only be as good as the questions that get asked. Lone Scherfig, the director, was there as well as Nick Hornby (!!!), who wrote the screen play, and Peter Sarsgaard, Carey Mulligan, Alfred Molina, and Dominic Cooper. There was an intense Alfred Molina fanboy in the balcony who said “Mr Molina, I just want to say that you have never sucked in a movie,” and Molina said “That’s what it will say on my headstone: ‘He never sucked’.” Speaking of Alfred Molina, I am happy to have been in the same room as someone who has made out with Gary Oldman.
Also, Theresa, someone in the audience said “Peter, your performance in Shattered Glass is one of my favourite performances of all time…” and I just about died.
- Danny Boyle, the crown prince of last year’s festival, came in about ten minutes before the lights went down and sat in an empty seat three rows in front of me. I think the guy he sat beside was probably quite surprised to find himself engaged in a ten minute conversation with the guy. I’ve heard actors and filmmakers say in the past that they like Toronto because they don’t get mobbed by fans and while Danny Boyle may not exactly be my most favourite of directors, I thought it was kind of awesome that he could slip into a screening, talk some guy’s ear off, and watch the movie without being bothered by anyone.
An Education
Like Obama says: stay in school, kids.
IMDB Plot Synopsis A coming-of-age story about a teenage girl in 1960s suburban London, and how her life changes with the arrival of a playboy nearly twice her age.