Most coming-of-age films oftentimes fall short in depicting the pains and joys of growing up. Superficial and always shallow, these films tend to miss the crucial marks on what constitute a believable and sensitive work. But the few that do manage to get it right somehow offset the regrettable mistakes of other movies of their kind, leaving a lingering impression in the memory long after the credits have rolled.
Fortunately, one of the few such works is An Education (Lone Scherfig, 2009).
The story of an impressionable 16-year-old's unpleasant sojourn into adulthood, Scherfig's An Education is remarkable in the adeptness of its storyline and the tightness of its narrative.
It begins with the uneventful, if at times dragging, life of Jenny Mellor (Carey Mulligan), a teenager in the '60's-era Britain bent on entering college in Oxford. With this end in mind, reaffirmed then and always by her domineering father, Jenny works doubly hard to keep her marks at school outstanding. Her lone waterloo is writing in Latin, but this is nothing in contrast to what she is about to get herself into after falling head over heels to David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard) and everything he is supposed to stand for.
An adult man well over twice her age, David pulls Jenny out of her rigid, if not lonely, world of rigorous study and boring chitchat with friends and family. Jenny takes everything in with a palpable sense of awe, experiencing things and seeing places she herself wouldn't have experienced or seen had she chosen to look away and stick to her original plan of going to Oxford. In between dinners in swanky restaurants and access to the most happening events in town, Jenny begins to question the relevance of her previous boring existence.
The succession of events in young Jenny's life excites her a tad too much. Convinced that she has got everything she needed in the much older David, she decides to drop everything – her studies and her Oxford dreams, notwithstanding – and agrees to marry him.
The catch, of course, is the fact that David isn't exactly who he claims to be. Jenny eventually finds out about this, but by then it's too late for her to undo everything she's done.
As it turns out, David is a conman who is in the business of stealing pricey art works, and he deliberately designs the devaluation of real estate properties so he can re-sell them at an exorbitant price. But perhaps most importantly, David is apparently married to somebody else, and that Jenny is just one of the many young girls David has conned to sleep with him, only to leave them miserable in the end.
Jenny realizes the extent with which her relationship with David has ruined things. The film concludes by showing Jenny resuming her studies, this time ever more studious, and reaping the reward of hardwork by acing the entrance exam for prospective Oxford students. And just like that, the film ends on a feel-good note.
An Education presents a decent level of subtlety and restraint, which lend it the power to move its audience and sympathize with the characters. Of course Mulligan's tour-de-force number as Jenny is a vital element to reckon with, and it doesn't come as a surprise that she was consistently shortlisted for top acting prizes by numerous award-giving bodies for her work here.
But the film's success is measured largely by its laudable mix of sensitivity and heartaches and joys and confusion by its characters. An Education stays true to what a coming-of-age movie should be. Save for the convenient ending, it is able to deliver and touch on other equally significant issues like racism and social class.
Truly, entering adulthood can be be quite a cathartic experience. Films like An Education only serve to highlight this fact. But this transition need not be traumatic at all. If anything, “An Education” is a unique celebration of life in both its darkest and brightest moments.