Jenny is an exceptionally bright schoolgirl in Cold War England. With her love of long novels, French records, and the Pre-Raphaelites, she feels as though no one understands her - until David comes into her life. A man in his thirties, David loves the arts and society and offers Jenny a chance to discover the parts of the world she always expected were out there. But things are not always what they seem, and nothing comes for free.
An Education is a somewhat formulaic film. I've seen this story before - young woman has to choose between intellectual passions and romantic ones - and of course David is just the sort of rebellious choice of men that would appeal to a young girl in a society that abhors rebellion. I think An Education goes a bit further than other movies have into the implications of its events - it asks some questions and purposely doesn't give answers about the role of women in society and the attitudes and ideals of British culture (which have probably changed since the 1960s but probably not entirely, because I see the echoes of a lot of these questions in my own, American, culture).
There isn't a lot of chemistry between Jenny and David - but I really want to give An Education the benefit of the doubt here. The attraction between them is not personal, it's not about who they are as individuals and more about what they represent to each other. However, I think if he had just been a tiny bit more physically attractive, I would have felt more involved in the relationship. I had issues with most of the other characters too; in a lot of cases, they were stereotypes or at least archetypes. The magical moments in this movie - and it does have its magical moments - occur when they step out of their thickly drawn boundaries and reveal unexpected sides to their personality. Which didn't happen quite often enough.
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