An Education

Bea says: I knew very little about this film before seeing it, except that Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay so I was kind of thinking - "blokey". Well, nothing could be further from the truth, and I was gripped by this early 1960s story of a bright young middle class woman, about to sit her 'A' levels and apply to Oxford, and her affair with an older man. Discussing it with Cecil on the way home I was amazed at how much still resonated with my own 1980s high school days - going out to clubs and bars with older friends and acquaintances and beginning to realise that older men found me interesting; a dread of getting pregnant; and the casual comment I remember a university lecturer making on discovering one of the honours students in my class had got married and pregnant in her final year of study - "well, that was a waste of our time, then".

The affair ends but not in the ways I thought it might as I watched the film, and Hornby's script is well written, although it would seem he had a good piece to work with in his adaptation. It was a great treat to see and hear a woman's story of that beatnik era, as often pieces from that time solely chart the lives and experiences of men, and although the themes (women's experiences of love, sex, marriage, and career choices) are familiar (Revolutionary Road for instance) this exploration offers a somewhat less harrowing portrayal, that gave me a lot to think about, about my own youth, and my life now.
****

Cecil says: Thoroughly good way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Good story, interesting characters and excellent script: an example of how this is all you need to be caught up in the plot of a film.

Funnily enough, the only character I really identified with was the clumsy school boy Graham, who gets nowhere with Jenny. His nervous dropping of the Battenberg cake reminded me of the time I turned up at Louise's house in Sixth Form to ask her out, only to find her older boyfriend (who I had thought was an ex by now) standing behind her at the fron door; I knocked over the milk bottles as I made my exit, humbled and embarrassed...

If I had any criticism of the film, I would say that the actress who played Jenny was a touch too posh in her accent, and a little too at ease with herself for a real 16-17 year old (but maybe some girls at that age just ARE!!). And, although amusing to watch, the parents were taken in a little too easily by the con-artist older boyfriend. AND, surely in 1961 EVERYONE would have been smoking upstairs on the bus...

But these are small nit-pickings of a thoroughly enjoyable film. "An Education" also makes some fascinating observations on a period which is even before my earliest memories. I loved the fact that Walthamstow dog track used to host glamorous jazz nights; the notion of a 'year-off to travel' (good old geeky Graham) after school was a mite too forward-thinking for an age when university was seen as the way to secure employment or marriage, though I have the feeling it was only seen as route to marriage for women in those days - and, as Bea says, this was really a film about young women finding their way in the world

***.5