"You never forget your first time" is one of those backhanded phrases that I think no one really wants to endorse. Of course, some people don't have memorable first experiences, and of those who do, only some, I suspect, really want to remember. I like to remember mine - with an artist of some repute in the art world, who I recently found out (in Vogue) is now married and living in Italy - because it has a certain name-droppy quality (come on - the first guy I slept with is written up in Vogue!) and, frankly, I had a really nice time.
An Education takes the familiar story of a first time experience with sex and love and manages to reinforce not some unhappy message about starting too young (there isn't, really, a right time, I think), but manages to remind us that we all have a first time... and then we move on. And it's okay.
Set in the early sixties, An Education tells the story of Jenny, a middle class girl in England, pushing for her chance to get into University, when she runs into a much older man, David, who... well, leads her astray. Soon, Jenny is ditching her studies for glamorous excursions into nightlife and David's slightly seedy world (he is, bascally, a huckster) of style without a lot of substance.
This is not necessarily new ground, but Nick Hornby's screenplay (from Lynn Barber's memoir) and Lone Scherfig's direction keep things focused on Jenny's slightly bemused, observational take on her own flowering into womanhood. Many of these sorts of female coming of age tales can give the girl a hard time for having her own desires or for enjoying her sexuality; An Education doesn't fall into those traps. In so doing, it manages to uncover new lessons in old truths: that something too good to be true usually is, and people say things like "stay in school" for a reason.
As Jenny, Carey Mulligan has one of this year's breakout roles, and she really does shine; if Jenny seems a little too easily converted into her new roles, Mulligan does a nice job of showing the quality of making up adult sophistication as you go along, unaware of the mines around you. Making sure Jenny survives is a good reason to see this film through. As David, Peter Sarsgaard is effortlessly charming, and manages to turn an easy stereotype into a real combination of believable contradictions. His betrayal is all the more striking and disheartening because the lies he's telling are to himself as well as others. Meanwhile, Olivia Williams and Emma Thompson do impressive supporting work as caring educators trying to keep Jenny's eyes on the real prize.
An Education made me realize how many of the films I'm watching these days - this, as well as Precious and even New Moon - are variations on women coming of age, and how long that process has been out of sight, hidden. As well, An Education made me think of those youthful days of bravado and mistaken choices, and how perhaps the message we forget to pass along is that you will make mistakes, and survive them. Learn something. Move on.
Which is why perhaps the most disheartening thing about Twilight: New Moon is that Bella, the lead character, seems to learn nothing. Bella is the protagonist in the doomed vampire love affair that drives the Twilight saga, yet as with the first film, she seems about the least present thing in her own life. The story continues to feed the contradictory - and arguably quite damaging - messages that a seemingly strong, independent thinking woman is nothing without a man, incapable of self protection, and prone to depressive fits when faced with her own solitude.
New Moon compounds the problematic themes by confounding Bella with a new problematic relationship: when Edward Cullen leaves her (and makes it seem her fault), Bella turns to Jacob, her childhood friend, part of a local native American tribe near her hometown. A with Edward's vampire status, it's no surprise to point out that Jacob is a werewolf, as are many men in his tribe.
"Preposterous" doesn't begin to cover this kind of plotting - I mean "Smart Women, Foolish Choices" didn't even envision a woman who could lurch from vampire to werewolf, nor did Anne Rice - and Stephenie Meyer's novel doesn't seem to offer much to make sense of it. The film suffers enormously from the absence of Robert Pattinson for the middle hour, as Jacob and Bella's attraction deepens, yet seems to go essentially nowhere fast. The movie picks up steam when Meyer essentially swipes the final act of Romeo and Juliet to service her threadbare plotting, and for once, the vampire elements of the story finally yield some results in the Vultari clan of Italy, Rice-ian vamps who drip luxe elegance and barely suppressed violence. Of course, we leave them there... and go back to rainy, drippy, desolate rural Washington state.
It's literally painful to watch this exercise - Pattinson, Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner all recite their dialogue as if it hurts, all done at a snail's pace that does nothing to give any sense of momentum to the proceedings. Pattinson is as exquisite as before, but that missing hour robs him of a chance to either connect with the audience or make a compelling case for the deathless romance meant to fuel this story. Lautner, sadly, is just overwhelmed, and while he may prove to be a viable presence, that's not what's here; as impressive as his physical transformation is for the role of Jacob, Lautner lacks some essential element of dangerous menace to give his scenes with Stewart tension. Without that, things drone along, and the emotions often seem misplaced, or misplayed.
The more obvious problem remains Stewart herself - faced with a depressive, reactive character, she has yet to inhabit the role fully, rather than sketch at it; Bella's endless passivity, her self destructiveness, moodiness and selfishness... do not make for likability or resonance (it's telling that the female driven audience divides neatly into "team Edward" or "team Jacob"; a "team Bella" would be hard pressed to dredge interest), and Twilight remains the curious saga of a girl no one seems to like or want to be, who is far less interesting or compelling than the things around her. If there's more to Bella than her flaws... Stewart seems at a loss to find them. And while director Chris Weitz has solved some stylistic flaws of Catherine Hardwicke, he's done little to solve the film's central, problematic messaging to its female audience.
And in the end, I found myself wishing that Jenny could give Bella some of her wisdom and sense of perspective - enough to see that a doomed romance isn't the end of the world, and a bad boyfriend is a nice thing to have... in your past.
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