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An Education is sweet and full of texture, it brought to life both the drab and the excitement of 60s Britain without really choosing sides: The drab is also comfortable and cozy. The exciting is also shady, strange. It's somehow wrong, wrong in ways you can't quite explain other than that it's not comfortable or cozy. That David is also somehow wrong we know right from the start, and as we and Jenny learn more about him the wrongness gets clearer and clearer until it's blatant, inarguable. But he was always wrong, and the movie handles this well, he never becomes any less or more than he is right there at the beginning. Only Jenny is changing.
The movie loses ground only when Jenny starts to become the voice of authorial arguments, delivering speeches to blank-faced adults who could very well offer a counter-argument but never do. Maybe that's the point though, she has to learn on her own, the adults in her life are of no help, not unless she wants their help. These other roles really make the movie though. Her father is played brilliantly by Alfred Molina, he exudes care and love and worry even while yelling, you just want to give him a hug every time he talks. Emma Thompson as the school headmistress is exactly the opposite, she never needs to show that she cares. She's only in a few short scenes and mostly on the quiet end of a Jenny-speech, but just in not arguing with Jenny she makes probably the strongest argument in the movie. These two performances balance the story, a cartoonish portrayal of either would have ruined it from the start.
Also excellent was Rosamund Pike as the trophy-girlfriend Helen, who manages to be dumb yet sweet without being too dumb or too sweet. Again, a cartoonish portrayal would have killed it.
The movie loses ground only when Jenny starts to become the voice of authorial arguments, delivering speeches to blank-faced adults who could very well offer a counter-argument but never do. Maybe that's the point though, she has to learn on her own, the adults in her life are of no help, not unless she wants their help. These other roles really make the movie though. Her father is played brilliantly by Alfred Molina, he exudes care and love and worry even while yelling, you just want to give him a hug every time he talks. Emma Thompson as the school headmistress is exactly the opposite, she never needs to show that she cares. She's only in a few short scenes and mostly on the quiet end of a Jenny-speech, but just in not arguing with Jenny she makes probably the strongest argument in the movie. These two performances balance the story, a cartoonish portrayal of either would have ruined it from the start.
Also excellent was Rosamund Pike as the trophy-girlfriend Helen, who manages to be dumb yet sweet without being too dumb or too sweet. Again, a cartoonish portrayal would have killed it.
