An Education (2009)

"You have no idea how boring everything was before I met you..."

Today’s film (which, as ever on a Sunday, is free and can be read by all) is Lone Scherfig’s An Education (2009), based on Lynn Barber’s coming-of-age memoir and adapted by Nick Hornby. There’s a terrific performance from Carey Mulligan (in her first film), lovely period detail — and the fabulous Rosamund Pike almost steals the show.

I loved An Education (2009) when it first came out — was it really fifteen years ago? — and watching it again last night, it lived up to all expectations.

Carey Mulligan: a revelation…

An Education (2009) is based on Lynn Barber’s autobiographical essay, originally published in Granta (2003); later re-included towards the beginning of her memoir published in 2009. It’s the story of a precocious sixteen-year-old suburban schoolgirl and her affair with Simon ‘Goldman’ (‘Alan Green’ in Barber’s original essay), a seemingly sophisticated older man, shady property developer and smooth Bristol-driving conman. In contrast to Jenny’s Oxford aspirations, Simon/Alan boasts that he’s been educated at ‘the University of Life’, and in a sense, that’s what An Education is all about.

As Lynn Barber wrote in the original Granta essay:

What did I get from Alan? An education — the thing my parents always wanted me to have. I learned a lot in my two years with Alan. I learned about expensive restaurants and posh hotels and foreign travel, I learned about antiques and Bergman films and classical music. All this was useful when I went to Oxford — I could read a menu, I could recognize a finger bowl, I could follow an opera, I was not a complete hick. But actually there was a much bigger bonus than that. My experience with Alan entirely cured my craving for sophistication. By the time I got to Oxford I wanted nothing more than to meet kind, decent, conventional boys my own age, no matter if they were gauche or virgins. I would marry one eventually and stay married all my life and for that, I suppose, I have Alan to thank.

‘The Bristol 405: that understated ‘Gentleman’s Express’…

Nick Hornby’s screenplay is a faithful adaptation of Lynn Barber’s original essay. An Education (2009) is set in the leafy suburbs of South West London, a temple to the Mock Tudor, in desperately staid 1961. Walking home from her private all-girls school in the rain, Jenny (Carey Mulligan) gets picked up by David (Peter Sarsgaard), a suave thirty-something in a sleek maroon Bristol 405, that understated ‘gentleman’s express’, the car of choice for old-school professionals: QCs, Harley Street surgeons, and clubbable Captains of Industry. Dirk Bogarde’s barrister drives one in Victim (1961), as does Daniel Day-Lewis’s couturier in Phantom Thread (2017), and Donald Sinden’s wealthy company director in Josephine and Men (1955). It’s that sort of car.

‘Almost stealing the show…’

Next, David charms his way into Jenny’s schoolgirl life: expensive flowers (Moyses Stevens?), invitations to classical recitals in Smith Square, little trips to Christie’s, fashionable Italian restaurants, a raffish night out at the Walthamstow dog track. And then there’s his uber-sophisticated friends: Danny (played by the excellent Dominic Cooper), a connoisseur of the Pre-Raphaelites; and his impossibly glamorous and adorable girlfriend, Helen (played by She Who Can Do No Wrong Rosamund Pike), who’s as thick as a fridge door. Cooper and Pike almost steal the show, with their slick house (flat?) in a stucco’d Nash terrace in Regent’s Park (Bedford Square in the Granta essay); the silvered cocktail cupboard, art collection, and collection of antique musical instruments.

‘The silvered cocktail cupboard and art collection…’

Cary Mulligan’s a revelation. She really is the intelligent, frustrated, arrogant teenager trapped in her philistine suburban upbringing, who allows herself to be conned. So that when David and Danny ‘liberate’ an antique 16th-century John Speed map from a little old lady in the Chiltern Hills, she ignores it. Oh, the flawed judgment of youth!

And there’s a brilliant performance from the American Peter Sarsgaard with his near-perfect English accent: “You know, a bit of this, a bit of that. Property, antiques — that sort of thing.” For the real ‘David’ was an acolyte of the notorious Peter Rachman, the unsavoury slum landlord of the Profumo Era, exploiting black working-class immigrants amongst the peeling stucco of Notting Hill and Bayswater.

‘Going to the dogs…’

David smarms up to Jenny’s well-meaning, but desperately parochial parents (played by Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) who, in their naivety, actually encourage the liaison. For this is a film about people who are not what they pretend to be. Jenny comes back from an illicit weekend in Oxford, with a hardback first edition of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, supposedly signed by ‘Clive Lewis’, i.e., C. S. Lewis, when Lewis hated his Christian name and rarely used it, preferring Jack, and in any event had moved to Cambridge by the early 1960s. Unlike Jenny’s parents, her bluestocking schoolmistresses (Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams) see through the deceit almost immediately.

Beth Rowley: ‘You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around Your Little Finger…’

There’s lovely, near faultless, period detail, filmed at some of my favourite places on Earth: the rainy, gaslit streets near Smith Square in Westminster; Gloucester Gate, Regent’s Park; the 1930s Art Deco splendour of the Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium (closed in 2008, but the front remains), and Turville, the brick-and-timbered village on the Buckinghamshire/Oxfordshire border. In the same way that you believe in the characters, it’s as if it really is 1961, not 2009 pretending to be 1961. Incidentally, the nightclub scene, which features the music of talented jazz musician Ben Castle (son of Roy) and his band, and the sultry vocals of Beth Rowley, was filmed at the legendary Café de Paris, 3 Coventry Street, near Piccadilly Circus, which closed in 2020 following the wretched COVID pandemic. On the 8th March 1941, during the London Blitz, a 50-kilogram German bomb fell down one of the Café de Paris’ ventilation shafts, exploding directly on the stage, killing thirty-four people, including band-leader Ken ‘Snakehips’ Johnson.

Rosamund Pike: ‘impossibly glamorous…’

So it’s four cheers for An Education (2009). I watched it on my own DVD, and you can see the original trailer here. Surprisingly, it doesn’t seem to be available on Amazon Prime Video or Netflix UK, although it may well be found on similar platforms abroad, including Apple TV. Failing that, British viewers can always buy a second-hand DVD online, and at the time of writing, several are available for less than five pounds plus free delivery. And that’s a good thing. Ben Castle and Beth Rowley’s You’ve Got Me Wrapped Around My Little Finger is also available on Spotify — and comes with my recommendation.

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