Young ingenue Carey Mulligan shines in ‘An Education’

“An Education” is a small art house picture with a big performance. Deservedly, its unfamiliar star Carey Mulligan is generating much of the attention for this witty coming-of-age slice of life. She imparts a memorable duality of personality strength and girlish adorability to Jenny, the precocious ingenue she plays. Her Oxford-bound 16-year-old in early 1960s England gets an education of an altogether different kind when she is seduced into a glamorous world by a much older man, played by formidable indie doyen Peter Sarsgaard.

With a down-to-earth script co-written by hip English author Nick Hornby (from a memoir by Lynn Barber), co-produced by Hornby’s wife, Amanda Posey, and directed by Lone Scherfig (of 2002’s acclaimed “Italian for Beginners”), the unassuming character piece won the audience award at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. Since then, it has been dazzling critics with a symbolic story: Jenny’s anxious, reactionary father (Alfred Molina) represents a repressed, post-World War II nation that was about to explode into the “swinging sixties.” Meanwhile, the exuberant, budding intellectual Jenny stands for the coming cultural youth revolution.

But it’s the personal, not the political, that resonates most in “An Education.”

Only limited opportunities were available to smart, promising girls like Jenny then. So her structured, stoic life was all mapped out for her by her practical father, a role model spinster teacher (Olivia Williams), and her strict headmistress (Emma Thompson in a small but pungent role). Jenny must work hard and sacrifice everything to go to Oxford to become a teacher, a civil servant, or a good catch of a wife.

But then one rainy day, the smooth-talking David (Sarsgaard) drives up in a hot little sports car to offer the soaked young thing and her nearly ruined cello a ride. Soon, the seemingly well-to-do suitor takes her to fine concerts, to posh nightclubs and, eventually, adventurous overnight jaunts that allow her to really experience both art and hedonism for the first time. David charms her parents into trusting him and brings her into his elegant circle, with Rosamund Pike and “Mama Mia”‘s Dominic Cooper shining as the beautiful people.

Then, in a dramatic turn of events, Jenny comes to question every assumption about how to live a fulfilled life.

Bringing to mind two classic English films actually made in that era, “Alfie” and “Georgy Girl,” this fine “Education” schools us by capturing the alternately exhilarating and devastating process of facing up to adulthood.