An Education (2008)

Scripted by novelist Nick Hornby, this unusually upmarket coming-of-age story made an overnight sensation of Carey Mulligan as a precocious schoolgirl learning life lessons in early 1960s London.
“One of the chief pleasures of Lone Scherfig’s crisply confident and charming coming-of-age drama is seeing a teenage girl who’s hungry for adult life rather than love or peer approval.” Kate Stables, Sight & Sound, 2009 Though based on a brief memoir by the journalist Lynn Barber, An Education was a personal project for novelist and screenwriter Nick Hornby, and was produced by his wife Amanda Posey. Carey Mulligan had her first starring role as Jenny, a suburban schoolgirl in early-60s London who is captivated when her sophisticated older boyfriend David (Peter Sarsgaard) introduces her to the finer things in life – not just sex, but Oxford, Paris and classical music – only to discover he has feet of clay. Danish director Lone Scherfig does a fine job of capturing the emotional and social nuances of the period, assisted by a top-notch supporting cast of British actors that includes Emma Thompson, Olivia Williams, Dominic Cooper, Alfred Molina and a scene-stealing Rosamund Pike. The screen adaptations of Nick Hornby’s own books usually revolve around feckless male protagonists: see Fever Pitch (1997 and 2005), High Fidelity (2000) and About a Boy (2002).
2008 United Kingdom, USA
Directed by
Lone Scherfig
Produced by
Finola Dwyer, Amanda Posey
Written by
Nick Hornby
Featuring
Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Rosamund Pike
Running time
100 minutes