CASEY PHILLIPS: At first, Carey Mulligan and "Precious" actress Gabourey Sidibe could hardly be more different, but their biographies now share striking similarities since both are in their mid-20s and recently earned Academy Award nominations for leading-role debuts portraying 16-year-olds facing very adult situations.
Creepy.
Mulligan plays Jenny, a British schoolgirl disillusioned with the soulless life society expects her to lead after graduating (fingers crossed) from Oxford. She would much rather smoke cigarettes and listen to black-clad, French singers, thank you very much.
In Peter Sarsgaard's David, she discovers an escape from these social confines to an ostensibly glamorous life of sports cars and weekend trips to Paris. Unfortunately, the price is her youthful innocence, and Mulligan's performance nails the emotional toll of that transaction.
HOLLY LEBER: Jenny is caught in that sometimes torturous period between childhood and adulthood. Her parents want her to go to Oxford so she can find a husband. She, in David and his friends, finds a life so caught up in being anti-bourgeois that it's revoltingly bourgeois in its pseudo Beatnik-ness. The problem is that neither life really, wholly works. The proper way of her parents is too stifling; the playful life too indulgent - and there's something not quite right beneath the surface.
Sarsgaard is an admirable actor, and here he's just the right combination of charming, eager and a little smarmy to pull off David. He can seduce both a high school girl and her parents without seeming like a pedophile or a baby sitter. All the while, there's something about him that's a little ... off, but it's hard to put a finger on.
CASEY: If I have one criticism to level at "An Education," it's that, despite being based on an autobiography, the romance seems unbelievable in its alacrity. Jenny meets David, compliments his sports car and, suddenly, they're in bed together. Also, Jenny's parents, played beautifully by a stuffy, protective Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, are bafflingly willing to indulge their daughter's obvious interest in a much older man.
Looking past that quibble, it's a hard film not to love. The casting was perfect, the camera work was beautiful, particularly in Paris, and the coming-of-age tale is tightly paced and thoroughly engrossing.
HOLLY: If "An Education" is any indication, being an adolescent girl didn't change much in 35 years. There's still the id-driven desire to roll around in any culture not on the parent-approved list.
After watching the film, however, I did have the desire to get dressed up and sip wine (the Paris part would have been nice too). Unlike Jenny, or David and his playmates, however, I'm an adult and know such indulgences are best left for Friday evenings.
She learns. Aptly titled film, this one.