An Education

Do you choose fun or learning? That's a question anyone perusing the programme of the Sydney Film Festival must face, and it's the dilemma of 16-year-old Jenny (Carey Mulligan) in closing night's triumphant An Education. An extremely bright London schoolgirl who plays the cello, drops Frenchisms into her daily speech and is eyeing off a spot at Oxford, she's full of joie de vivre, as if in anticipation of the swinging 60s that are about to begin (it's 1961). When a handsome older man, David (Peter Sarsgaard) offers Jenny a lift in the rain, it's her entrée into a world of concerts, art auctions, stylish friends and weekends in Paris; even Jenny's middle-class parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour) are charmed. But her mousy teacher (Olivia Williams) and stern headmistress (Emma Thompson) are less than impressed with Jenny's sexual and sensual awakening.

Danish director Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners) directs Nick Hornby's script, which is based on a memoir by formidable Observer journalist Lynn Barber. The familiar faces in the cast are all playing against type - Rosamund Pike has a delicious turn as an intellectually vacant Chelsea girl, and Sarsgaard (with an English accent) hits the perfect note of feckless likeability as life-loving Jew David. But the film's appeal rests on Mulligan (Pride and Prejudice), a cute-as-a-button child-woman with the uncanny knack of seeming naïve and worldly at the same time. (Audrey Hepburn had the same kind of screen presence.) Her Jenny sees life as a great big adventure, and audiences will love joining her on it when the film is released nationally in October. Life or education? Sometimes you get both in the same package. Nick Dent