Growing up and realizing life in its fullest necessarily links to school in the long history of literature and the shorter but not less influential history of cinema. So when watching An Education we can't help thinking if not of David Copperfield, then at least of Dead Poets' Society or even more, Mona Lisa Smile. A bright young student who discovers that there is more to life than learning and following parents' rules is always a challenge to present, and the Nick Hornby-scrip rises up to our expectations. This movie is good because it's not as naive as the average American films: our charming and clever protagonist might be a teenager who wants to go her own way and thinks she knows it best, but she can spot the difference between dream and reality and can draw conclusions if needed. What sets this movie apart from others with the same subject (mind you, not the ones I mentioned before, those actually are the few exceptions) could be also named as the general difference between a high-budget blockbuster and an art-film: commercial movies tell you the idealized, black-and-white version of life, when the princess always marries the prince and they live happily until the "The End" title, while art-films tell one particular story, where you might have a faint guess what will happen but you can never be sure, because - the best way - characters think for themselves or at least writers and directors do.
When watching An Education, one might get a vague feeling of familiarity: a story might seem a bit known, it might have clichés which you remember from other films - but then again, life is like that and, according to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, we can only name and recognize things and values in our lives which we've already seen in other people's lives. Plus, it is set in a middle-class suburban neighbourhood of London of the 1960's which most of us only know from movies so it has to have a certain recognizability, it never claims total originality. Actually, it's the conventionality of the set and the story which makes us want to watch it, the feeling of certainty, the security of our society, our lives, our stories known by heart: if someone is special, then it's okay for them to meet new and interesting people and rebel against the boring path their parents put in front of them, if it's the 60's then love should come ahead of career, if it's romantic comedy (and with an attractive female main character mostly is) then love conquers all and without second thoughts or regrets.
When watching An Education, one might get a vague feeling of familiarity: a story might seem a bit known, it might have clichés which you remember from other films - but then again, life is like that and, according to the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, we can only name and recognize things and values in our lives which we've already seen in other people's lives. Plus, it is set in a middle-class suburban neighbourhood of London of the 1960's which most of us only know from movies so it has to have a certain recognizability, it never claims total originality. Actually, it's the conventionality of the set and the story which makes us want to watch it, the feeling of certainty, the security of our society, our lives, our stories known by heart: if someone is special, then it's okay for them to meet new and interesting people and rebel against the boring path their parents put in front of them, if it's the 60's then love should come ahead of career, if it's romantic comedy (and with an attractive female main character mostly is) then love conquers all and without second thoughts or regrets.But this particular piece of cinema doesn't want to sell us dreams, or if it does, then they aren't the ones we expect to buy. She might be a regular child who prefers fancy dinners and Parisian trips to studying for exams and mugging up Latin words, but she realizes soon enough that just as studying is only a part of life, so is partying. And it might be natural for a young woman to fall in love with a charming older man who makes her life so much more exciting, but that doesn't necessarily mean that she has to grab every opportunity to express her affection and that the painful and embarrassing first time should turn into a transcendental experience of love.
This movie doesn't claim that it knows life, not even that it can show us a piece of it. And it is this quality that makes it seem it could. It doesn't want to charm us with the prospect of a life which could be possible in our cultural, social and economic situation, but it never quite is, it charms us with its pictures, its story, its colours and characters. It compels us to view its events and images as a movie, to think about them not just crave for them, it doesn't give us an answer, it inclines us to ask questions. And Paris... well yes, that's as beautiful as in any romantic film set in this foreign land, an epiphany of Europe, land of love. Cause it might be just across the Channel, but even for the British it is the archetypical setting for romance.
This movie doesn't claim that it knows life, not even that it can show us a piece of it. And it is this quality that makes it seem it could. It doesn't want to charm us with the prospect of a life which could be possible in our cultural, social and economic situation, but it never quite is, it charms us with its pictures, its story, its colours and characters. It compels us to view its events and images as a movie, to think about them not just crave for them, it doesn't give us an answer, it inclines us to ask questions. And Paris... well yes, that's as beautiful as in any romantic film set in this foreign land, an epiphany of Europe, land of love. Cause it might be just across the Channel, but even for the British it is the archetypical setting for romance.
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