(Editor’s Note: This trend has manifested itself in Dave’s real, albeit pathetic love life. He is attracted to strong women in various forms, although you wouldn’t know it since he is also scared away by these women. It’s a devastating circle he’s trapped in. As his editor I would suggest that he starts courtin prostitutes or girls that are a little slow)
The trick about playing a likable female lead is the precarious balances they need to maintain. There is a tightrope of a walk between aggressive leader and bitchy or emotional wreck and sentimental. This could stem from a double standard, and I’d agree to that assertion to a certain extent.
I think the bigger problem is the product of poorly created characters that aren’t written well enough. Great actresses can overcome this, like Julia Roberts in her prime or Lauren Graham during the last season of Gilmore Girls, but most women fall victim to stereotypes.
One shouldn’t discount the strong presence of personality, though, which explains why I almost always like Zooey Deschanel (except when she’s breaking Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s heart) or Kristen Stewart. Sometimes a person’s real person a shines so bright that a bad setup can’t quell their natural likeability. The converse of this would be Katherine Heigel or Jennifer Aniston, who bomb in roles that aren’t perfectly tailored to their narrow skill sets.
What does all this have to do with anything? Well, tonight I saw the movie An Education, which is primarily built on the back of newcomer Carey Mulligan.
An Education is set in England during 1961, before the Beatles were big and England was a depressing island for teenage girls. Mulligan plays Jenny, who is bright, talented and cute, and by all traditional metrics seems to have the world by the balls.
Her father (Alfred Molina) is encouraging her to build up a resume with extracurricular activities so she can make herself more attractive to the Oxford recruiters. Molina is hilarious in this role, which seems very familiar to the overbearing parents that have become the norm during the college application process. Cara Seymour is equally appealing as Jenny’s mum. The pair of parents love their daughter and support her, so long as she studies her Latin and can eventually support herself with a man or a college education.
Jenny eventually catches the eye of David (Peter Sarsgaard), and the 30ish playboy strikes up a strange relationship with the soon to be 17-year-old. Their relationship is built on the fact that she’s an old soul, with refined tastes and the fact that he offers her a world that she would have to otherwise wait to experience. David woos Jenny’s parents and it’s not long before they’ve joined another couple (Dominic Cooper and Roasmund Pike) on splendid double dates that wow the wide eyed young girl.
Throughout this transformative experience Jenny is balancing her two lives, although a clear transition is occurring that shifts her focus away from school. The whole experience is hard for her to quantify, except in giddy retellings to her friends that lack the real confliction that mars her experiences, as she isn’t really old enough to digest what’s happening.
She finds her footing as David’s significant other, falling into step with the pace and demands of the world she wants to participate in. Ultimately, though, this life begins to spin out of control and Jenny can’t straddle her two lives anymore, and needs to choose one of them. A small twist ensues and then some convenient turn of events before Mulligan’s voiceover ends the movie.
Before I laud Mulligan with praises let me comment on the movie, which is layered with a plethora of excellent performances. Molina and Seymour are great as Jenny’s parents. They never become two-dimensional figures that exist solely as foils to Jenny’s life, but rather give and take like real parents.
Emma Thompson is pitch perfect as the school master in just three scenes. Sally Hawkins packs a punch in less than two minutes on screen. If Pike was really acting like an airhead, and she’s not in fact a moron, she was great. Cooper shows a breadth of range I knew he had from History Boys, but assumed he had forgotten during Mama Mia.
Olivia Williams, who plays Jenny’s teacher Miss Stubbs, captures a complicated character in just a look, finally exploding on scene with a vigor and strength of more notable actresses when given a taste of dialogue. Like Pike’s character, Williams offers one of two routes Jenny is contemplating for her life. Her exasperated glances and restrained oratory was eerily reminiscent of some of my better and more browbeaten teachers in my life.
As for Sarsgaard, I think I’m happy with his performance. He’s a flawed antagonist to be sure, and while I’m not sure he plays charming very well, I don’t think he needs to. It’s obvious to the audience that David is a scumbag, but we have the benefit of not being the teenager that Jenny is.
In that regard, it seems like Sarsgaard does a good job crafting a character that can be perceived radically different depending on the light. He can look like an obvious cautionary tale to certain people, a promising suitor or a doorway to something new and exciting. The only downside is the dour expressions he strikes throughout the movie, and the fact that he constantly gives me the willies (but then again I’m not a teenage girl). In the end the movie soars on the performance of Carey Mulligan. Mulligan was 23 or 24 in this movie, which probably makes it possible for her to grasp the maturity she demonstrates as Jenny. Her real life age makes it easier for her to stand out from her peers, in terms of physical maturity and the look of an old soul, which is complimented by her general refinement that comes from her love of books and affinity for all things French.
Mulligan is cute, and becomes more appealing as you explore the depth of her face. Yet, while attractive, she isn’t exactly sexy, or more to the point a sexual being. Jenny knows that she wants to have sex for her 17th birthday, but she doesn’t know what it will be like and is a little apprehensive. Mulligan nails this insecurity and really conveys Jenny’s interest in exploring sex and her own sexuality. While you never see them have sex, Mulligan allows Jenny to change with this changing event. Jenny becomes more self-confident and self-aware, as she loses her sense of awe towards sex and comments on how short it is. I can only imagine how Lindsay Lohan or a more respected joker like Emma Stone might have played this transition, with a musical montage culminating in a hair flip and purposeful stride. As done by Mulligan, you begin to see a girl enter one stage of womanhood. At the same time, though, Mulligan retains Jenny’s youthful irreverence that makes her think she knows everything now that the “one” big mystery in life has been unraveled and exposed as a little deal (pun intended).
Am I doing Mulligan justice? It’s hard for me to accurate describe how good she is, except to say that she more realistically tackles Olivia Newton John’s evolution as Sandy in Grease.
She plays sweet. She plays smart. She plays sexy. She stops playing games all together and gets serious. She cries. She smiles.
Throughout all of this Mulligan draws you in, and in my case I felt like a wide range of emotions from protective older brother to older admirer.
Jenny takes in life in a short window of time, and Mulligan sells on the reality of all this.
I can’t recommend this movie strongly enough. I can’t sing the praises of Mulligan loudly enough. Heck, I even laughed during this movie, which was punctuated by the few times when I wanted to cry.
You’re drawn into this movie early on with a catchy title credits, and the world is compelling enough that when Mulligan crashes onto the screen you’re already sucked in.
Learning has never been as fun as it was in An Education.
(Editor's Note: See it before the Oscars, so you can be genuinely pissed when Sandra Bullock steals the Oscar from Mulligan. Oh yeah, Mulligan will also be nominated for a Lumby)
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