Movie: An Education

As someone who is always up for a weird movie, my best friend's brief description of the plot of An Education peaked my interest enough to finally sit down and watch it (nevermind that came out 3 years ago.)  True, Peter Sarsgaard's oddly attractive face is usually enough to make up for a lame storyline anyway, but that's really beside the point.

From the get go, as shallow as it may be, I had a hard time getting past everyone's Brit accents and references.  Once I finally accepted that the many references to French literature and fashion and philosophy and everyfuckingFrenchthingyoucanimagine were far beyond me, I was able to better focus on the story.

Within the first few minutes, I gathered that the main character, Jenny, was a typical teenage schoolgirl under a ridiculous amount of pressure from her parents who insisted she attend Oxford University.  Nothing special there.  Oh, and she plays the Cello.  I do like the Cello.

So one day Jenny is waiting for a ride outside her orchestra rehearsal in the rain when creepy stranger Peter Sarsgaard (David) pulls up in his shiny car with an awful (period appropriate, I'm sure, but it didn't work for me) hair-do and gives the smart/talented/stupid girl a ride home.  I can't imagine a movie that begins with a young girl getting into a car with a strange older man ending badly... right?

After he gives her an innocent ride home, she coincidentally runs into him in the street a few days later, and the whole thing just kind of falls into place: He invites her out to fancy events and they prance around London and be fancy together.  He picks her up at her parents' house and lies to them about where they're going and what they're doing when they're out being fancy, but the parents don't seem too overly concerned about it.  I have a hard time believing that parents can be so ridiculously bipolar in any decade in any country.

Eventually stupid Jenny picks up on the fact that fancy David and his friend have money to do fancy things because their "business" consists of some shady art stealing and purposefully moving black families into flats near racist old women so that the old women want to leave and they can buy their flats cheap.  I can't pretend to not think this is a little funny.  Why not make money off of peoples' dumb racism?  High five, Peter Sarsgaard.

Anyway, David takes Jenny on a trip to Paris and there are a couple of beyond awkward, 'I'm-a-virgin-and-stuff,' sort-of sex scenes that made me more uncomfortable than I've felt in a long time. 
I never could've imagined that something so NOT graphic and explicit could've been so terrifying to watch, especially since I'm usually rooting for oddly-matched couples.

The awkward sex weirdness should've been enough foreshadowing to warn me, but I was still shocked at the ending.  David proposes to Jenny, Jenny finds out he's actually married.  Okay, no big deal, not really surprised.  So Jenny takes a nice stroll over to David and wife's house, arriving at the front door at the same time wife and goofiest looking little child ever are on their way.  Without really saying anything, wife is fully aware of who Jenny is and doesn't hide her awareness of the situation, going on to inform Jenny that she is one of many young girls whom David...creeped, or whatever.  Then my favorite line in the whole movie happened.  Wife asks Jenny, standing in the street: "Are you in a family way?" ....HA.  Wife then continues to make reference to other young girls who got pregnant by David.  Classy family.

I probably should've mentioned that there was significant focus on the trade-off of Jenny's spending time with David and her schoolwork and getting into Oxford and all that.  That whole story is kind of a given.  After she realizes he's a super creep she focuses back on school and ends up getting into Oxford anyway.  Again, no surprise there.  Happily ever after.

Overall, a good enough movie for me.  Lots of weirdness to peak my interest, some teen angst and rebellion, Peter Sarsgaard, and a new phrase to use when I refer to pregnant women.