It is barely October, nearly a month before award season fare starts trickling slowly but surely into movie theatres, and I already have my film of the year. And I must say, a new favorite film of at least the last decade, if not of all time. Ok, maybe co-favorite, sharing the title with another coming-of-age masterpiece, Almost Famous. I don't even need to see Nine before making such an assertion. Not even the thought of Daniel Day Lewis driving a vintage car along a cliff in the South of France can sway me.
An Education is a coming-of-age tale about a young girl, Jenny, who is seduced by an older man in 1960's London. It is also, in my opinion, a very rare example of cinematic perfection. Very, very rare, I might add, in the current film landscape of big budgets and big explosions with very little content. I'd like to write an open letter to the idiots behind G.I. Joe and tell them kindly that the super-bionic character who has things injected into them against their will that then allows them to scale walls, leap off balconies and karate chop people three times their size has been done. To death. Please move on, I beg of you.
If I could take a fantasy screenwriting credit for any film, I would pick this one. I wouldn't change a single word, and that just never happens. For example, I actually had visions of leaping into Kate Winslet's mouth during Revolutionary Road to make her say the words I knew she should be saying. The actual writer of this film, Nick Hornby of About a Boy fame, is pitch perfect for the era and also for the age and gender of his main character, played by the luminous Carey Mulligan. They should hand out this script on the first day of every Screenwriting 101 class. It's that spectacular.
Likewise, the cinematography is simply stunning, as highlighted by the gorgeous, slightly faded dreamscape that is a young Francophile's first encounter with a mid-century Paris. Did I say Francophile? Why yes I did. Can you say you had me at hello? Or more like had me at minute five, as a young, British Jenny lies on her picture perfect 1960's bedroom floor in knee socks reading a french novel and listening to Juliette Greco on her record player. Yep, I'm in.
Best Picture? Yes. Best Actress? Most definitely. Please go see this movie. Let's try and save intelligent filmmaking from extinction.
An Education opens on October 16th.
