Word: mulligans
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...love the pre-Raphaelites!" gushes Jenny (Carey Mulligan), with the unself-conscious exuberance of a bright 16-year-old. The star pupil at an élite London girls' school, Jenny has her eyes on Oxford, but can't help giving a longing glance at the world of luxe, of fine art and good restaurants, that she is mad to enter. Admission to the dolce vita is the apple held out by her new friend David (Peter Sarsgaard), a suave businessman twice her age. He, in turn, is seduced by Jenny's intellectual brio and, for all her poise, innocence. With...
People are getting that same glow from Mulligan, the 24-year-old star of the Brit romantic comedy-drama An Education. Critics and moviegoers keep saying, "Not since Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday ..." - burdensome praise for any young actress, but a commendation Mulligan has earned. She's as yet unknown to the mass American audience: she had a small, unremarkable role in this summer's Public Enemies, and will be seen in December with Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman and Tobey Maguire in Brothers. Yet she seems assured of a career breakthrough and an Oscar nomination for An Education, both because...
...What Mulligan has that makes her stand out from other professional beguilers is a warm gaze with laser intensity, and the gift of thought transference: the viewer always knows what's going on inside her characters. She doesn't turn on the starkest emotions but finds them within her. When she gets the news of her brother's disappearance in My Son Jack, her devastation is both extravagant and acute; too much seems exactly the right amount. Her Nina in The Seagull wore emotions so raw that Mulligan was in a sluice of tears for nearly the entire evening...
...Education, which has been cannily adapted from English journalist Lynn Barber's memoir by Nick Hornby and sensitively visualized by Danish director Lone Scherfig (Italian for Beginners), Mulligan is again in coming-of-age mode. In the pre-swinging London of 1961, Jenny is already a star of sorts: the smartest, most self-possessed student in her class. Her goal is to be accepted into Oxford; she wants it, and so does her rather overbearing father Jack (Alfred Molina) in the staid, lower-middle-class suburb of Twickenham. But Jenny knows that there's more to life than excelling...
Teachers' and schoolgirls' hearts are made to be broken, and An Education makes that trip too. Virtually the entire cast contributes to make it an enchanting ride. Sarsgaard, a stalwart of Amer-indie films (Kinsey, Elegy, Jarhead) who as Trigorin was also Mulligan's love interest in The Seagull, easily inhabits David, making him a creature of charm and mystery. The smaller roles are nicely filled out as well, including Cara Seymour as Jenny's quiet mother and Matthew Beard as a gauche student whose dreams of dating a precocious teen Jenny and Jack keep smashing...