An Education
Directed by Lone Scherfig. Written by Nick Hornby, based on the memoir by Lynn Barber. With Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Olivia Williams, Alfred Molina, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, and Emma Thompson. (PG-13)
In the new coming of age film An Education, a schoolgirl, old for her years, gets involved with an older man. There are trips to Paris, smoky jazz clubs, and other things perhaps more adult than she at first anticipated. "I suppose you think I'm a ruined woman," remarks precocious Jenny to the headmistress of her exclusive school, after she comes crashing back to Earth. "Oh," replies the older woman, shaking her head, "you're not a woman."
Yet in many ways, she is—in an article written earlier this year for a British newspaper, Lynn Barber, the woman whose story the film adapts, describes how her liaison with an older man "cured my craving for sophistication," and by the time it ends one can't help but feel that Barber, or her cinematic stand-in Jenny (Carey Mulligan) got the better of the relationship.
It's a thoughtful twist in what most would expect to be a story of victimization, but few aspects of the film play to prejudice. At its beginning, the 16-year-old Jenny meets the suave David (Peter Sarsgaard) when he offers her a ride home during a downpour. A sharp student and amateur cellist, she's on her way to Oxford under the tutelage of a dedicated teacher and a whip-cracking father. Then David introduces her to his friends and a world outside of her tightly scheduled life, and she leaps at the chance to escape.
As in Nabokov's novel Lolita, part of the surprise here is the unexpected balance of power; for most of the story, it's Jenny who rules David. It's not a conscious thing—simply agreeing to be with him gives her the reins of the relationship—and Mulligan is wonderful as we watch her slowly wake up to the full meaning of her situation, all eager eyes and curling grin. If you haven't seen her in much before, plan on seeing her in much more after this performance. In a film that pits her against Oscar winner Emma Thompson—she plays that headmistress in a few tightly wound scenes—she holds her own in marvelous fashion.
But Sarsgaard, too, deserves credit: his David is never a lecher, or at least never just a lecher, and it's an essential distinction. Indeed, his greatest seduction isn't of Jenny, but of her very upright parents. His time with their daughter isn't a collection of stolen moments—he shows up on their front step to discuss their plans with the pair. Is he totally honest? Of course not, but there's a surprising amount of truth in his meaning when he says how wonderful it is "to find a young person who wants to know things."
Of course, it isn't a relationship built to last. From the start, we know it has to end, and there isn't a moment when we're not on Jenny's side, hoping she doesn't get hurt. What's remarkable is that by the time the credits roll, she seems more mature than the adults who were so worried about her.
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M. Hulot's Holiday
Directed by Jacques Tati. Written by Jacques Tati, Pierre Aubert, Jacques Lagrange, and Henri Marquet. With Jacques Tati, Nathalie Pascaud, Micheline Rolla, Valentine Camax, and Louis Perrault. (NR)
Not much happens in M. Hulot's Holiday, and that's a good thing. Jacques Tati's 1953 comedy dispenses with one of the central supports of cinematic architecture—the plot—to create a unique and decidedly modern slapstick.
In this inaugural entry in the Hulot series, Tati's hero visits a seaside town for a weeklong vacation. There, Hulot—think of Chaplin's famous tramp as a six foot three middle class mail clerk—encounters the absurd intricacies of modern living. A gentler and less acrobatic comedian than his slapstick ancestors—less about pratfalls than a finely wrought double-take—Tati's humor is often understated and wry, the sort that's easy to overlook.
In fact, Tati makes it almost a point of pride that his Hulot is easily overlooked. His fellow vacationers, intent on having their allotment of fun, take little notice of him. The blonde beauty who catches his eye seems to both encourage and ignore him, and the only people who take any real interest in Hulot are older folk who perhaps sense a rogue free spirit in an over-ordered world.
But as Tati downplays the visual, he pushes sound to the fore: dialogue in Hulot is kept to a minimum, but the soundtrack is a rich stew of everyday sound—the repeating "bung" of a swinging door, the backfire of Hulot's jalopy, the gentle plop of a pen dropped into water. Tying it all together is Alain Roman's score, centered on a seven-note xylophone riff that perfectly captures the film's sunny and effortless charm. It's a formula that reached its pinnacle with Tati's 1967 film Playtime—a modern masterpiece that far outstrips M. Hulot's Holiday, yet traces its roots to the film. Fans of one should see the other; fans of film, both.
*
Also this week: In an era when the advertising budget of a movie might exceed the cost of making the film itself, the Hollywood PR machine is most often a hyperbolic joke, where any director who uses at least one special effect is hailed as a visionary. One filmmaker who actually deserves such approbation is Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese writer/director behind mind-opening films like My Neighbor Totoro and the Academy Award-winning Spirited Away. Far from being mere cartoons, his animated films often deal with ecological imbalances, the afterlife, and other supposedly "grown-up" issues.
On Friday and Saturday nights, his 1997 film Princess Mononoke comes to Shelburne Falls' Memorial Hall as part of Pothole Pictures' winter film series. Like his recent film Ponyo, this earlier work looks at the often destructive relationship of man and nature, but with a darker tone that was largely lacking in Ponyo's mermaid story. Billy Crudup (Watchmen) stars as the hero searching for balance between old and new; joining him are Gillian Anderson and Claire Danes as the voices of the wolf god Moro and the human girl her clan has adopted as their own. As always with the film series, both screenings will be preceded by live, local music on the hall's grand stage.
On Thursday, two very different events come to the area, starting with a 4 p.m. screening at Amherst College's Stirn Auditorium. There one can catch Matthias Keilich's 2006 comedy Die K?nige der Nutzholzgewinnung (Lumber Kings), which is showing as part of the school's ongoing German Film Series. (The screening repeats at 7:30 p.m.) A blue-collar affair in the vein of The Full Monty, it stars Bjarne M?del as Krischan, a lovable loser with an economic stimulus plan for his dying town: hold a lumberjack competition. The locals of Tanne—including old friends Ronnie and Bert—are decidedly less than enthusiastic.
Also arriving this week is Glenn Beck's The Christmas Sweater: A Return to Redemption, which will play at Hadley's Cinemark Theater on Thursday at 8 p.m. Based on the bestselling book by the Fox News commentator—who has also produced the somewhat less Christmas-y collection America's March to Socialism—this sequel of sorts picks up where the original tearjerker left off, and explores the impact Beck's tale has had on people across the country. One wonders, however, if the film mentions that what Beck describes as being "based on a deeply personal true story" is, according to the book's own copyright page, "a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events… is entirely coincidental." Bah, humbug."
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
