I’m a sucker for a good coming-of-age story, and this is a very good one. At their best, these stories are universal, because what adult hasn’t gone through a period of transition, and highly specific. Not many people watching this movie will have been a 16-year-old girl in middle-class London in the early 1960s, and fewer still will have had a romantic relationship with a man in his 30s. But the feeling of wanting to become sophisticated, to feel special, that drives young Jenny (Carey Mulligan, convincing despite being in her 20s), may yet seem familiar.
Smartly adapted from Lynn Barber’s autobiographical essay by novelist Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy), the movie evokes not only the teenage years but the era of Britain in the period between postwar recovery and swinging Sixties, at the dawn of the mod era. (The director is Lone Scherfig, who made the beautifully melancholy Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself.) It is the lure of a world beyond stern headmistresses and nervous schoolboys that draws Oxford-hopeful Jenny to David (Peter Saarsgard), who is, exotically, Jewish and acquainted with the worlds of art and classical music. He also persuasive enough to seduce not only Jenny but her parents as well. Alfred Molina makes the most of his role as the father who is alternately very strict and, when it comes to David dating his daughter, weirdly lenient. Jenny’s English teacher (Olivia Williams) and the headmistress (Emma Thompson) are rather more disapproving.
In a culture that’s increasingly sensitive to the power imbalance of older men versus younger girls, it would be easy to cast David as simply some evil con artist who sets out to seduce and ruin a young innocent girl, but the story is broader than that. David, of course, turns out to be hiding a few things, but he is not simply a villain, Jenny is not simply a victim, and the characters and the story are rendered with a specificity that forces one away from a snap judgment about the value of the “education” Jenny gets.
IMDB list
viewed 11/14/09 at Ritz 5 and reviewed 11/14–24/09
I thought the story was predictable. When David first pulls up in the car, Jenny is wary. Gradually, she is persuaded to relinquish her cello. Yes, David seems charming, but...But we know that something is hidden from us. We watch as Jenny's doubts - and her parents'- are overcome, one by one. In the first few minutes we know what kind of education Jenny will receive, and that Oxford will always remain a hope, even when she walks out of school.
ReplyDeleteThe predictablity annoyed me, but I tried to see David from Jenny's point of view and that made the film bearable. (The fast shots of Paris also had their predictable effect.)
My psychologist companion described David as a sociopath. In that sense, Jenny was a victim just like the other women who preceded her. While Jenny did supress her doubts, David used his manipulative powers to overcome them.
I thought the film's interest lay in the tension between what Jenny's doubt and credulity, both controlled by David the predator.