An Education
Another rather lovely day. The menfolk are still away. Honor got up at nine and baked cookies for the youth group bake sale. I didn't want to take my germs to church and she didn't want to stay for youth group, so we just dropped them off and came home. Her friend Fae came over to study with her and I invited Fae to go to the movies and out to dinner with us. While they were studying, I raked the leaves which had dried in the 70 degree weather; it was like moving popcorn with a fork.
We saw An Education, about a teenaged girl who gets involved with a man in England in 1961. This movie got wonderful reviews and I thought it was the kind of thing that Honor would not choose on her own, but would enjoy and possibly benefit from.
It was everything the reviews suggested - spot-on performances and just the right level of tartness. Sixteen-year-old Jenny's middle class family has been big on ambition and very short on fun, so when she meets 40-year-old David, she is ripe to fall in love with his sophistication, spontaneity and joie de vivre. Her parents, who have been pushing her to study every moment so she can get into Oxford, are equally seduced by David's flattery and warmth, to the point that they feel marriage will provide all the security for her that the Oxford education would have done.
But what I really enjoyed about this film is its refusal to make villains or victims out of anyone. David is a seducer, but he seduces himself as well and suffers the crumbling of his fantasy. Jenny is not a passive child overwhelmed by the power of an adult; she negotiates and sets boundaries in a most admirable way, and her choices, although made from inexperience, are real choices. Many adult women would be proud to handle their relationships the way Jenny handles hers. Even her lame-o dad has a chance at late self-recognition and he takes it. In the end, Jenny will be fine - sadder, but wiser - and she has received - not ironically - an education.
We saw An Education, about a teenaged girl who gets involved with a man in England in 1961. This movie got wonderful reviews and I thought it was the kind of thing that Honor would not choose on her own, but would enjoy and possibly benefit from.
It was everything the reviews suggested - spot-on performances and just the right level of tartness. Sixteen-year-old Jenny's middle class family has been big on ambition and very short on fun, so when she meets 40-year-old David, she is ripe to fall in love with his sophistication, spontaneity and joie de vivre. Her parents, who have been pushing her to study every moment so she can get into Oxford, are equally seduced by David's flattery and warmth, to the point that they feel marriage will provide all the security for her that the Oxford education would have done.
But what I really enjoyed about this film is its refusal to make villains or victims out of anyone. David is a seducer, but he seduces himself as well and suffers the crumbling of his fantasy. Jenny is not a passive child overwhelmed by the power of an adult; she negotiates and sets boundaries in a most admirable way, and her choices, although made from inexperience, are real choices. Many adult women would be proud to handle their relationships the way Jenny handles hers. Even her lame-o dad has a chance at late self-recognition and he takes it. In the end, Jenny will be fine - sadder, but wiser - and she has received - not ironically - an education.