An Education
Year: 2009
Grade: B
Country: UK
Director: Scherfig
Reviewstory about a girl who falls for a guy who’s twice her age. or, to put it another way, about a guy who tricks a young girl and her family into thinking he’s a good guy. mostly it’s a film about a smart girl who isn’t wise and is unfortunate in that she doesn’t have any wise people around her. sure, they’re all brilliant when it comes to jane eyre and latin and the like, but when it comes to common sense questions like “why is a 40 year old guy picking up 16 year olds?” they not only don’t have a proper answer, they hardly even seem to ask the question. they’re more distracted by his charm or the fact that he’s a jew than the fact that he’s someone unattached and seemingly perfect yet is still single in spite of his age.
the tragic figures here are of course the girl who gets caught up in the fantasy world that the guy presents and the boy (graham) who she used to be interested in before the old guy came into the picture. graham does everything right, is smart and even wants to travel rather than bury his head in the books after high school, but he gets the short end of the stick in this one. c’est la vie, he’s probably better off without these schlubs anyway.
the film itself is fine enough, but nothing special. falls under the “reader” category in this year’s run to the academy’s, but it doesn’t have a performance like that from winslet and it doesn’t have anything about the holocaust so it doesn’t get bonus points for that. i’m being facetious of course.
Watched in theater