What a remarkably lovely film An Education is. Before I had even seen it, I had already been wooed by its promise of a Nick Hornby screenplay, Carey Mulligan and the sheer Britishness of it all. (I am a bit of an Anglophile.) What I pleasantly discovered was that my every hope was fulfilled by this enchanting film.

Peter Sarsgaard and Carey Mulligan

Intelligent and mature for her 16 years, Jenny Miller (Academy Award nominee Mulligan) dreams of little more than escaping her tiny life in a London suburb with her bourgeois parents (Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour). With her father pushing her toward Oxford, Jenny spends her days studying classic works of Brit lit and translating Latin in preparation for her A-levels.

But then she meets David Goldman (Peter Sarsgaard), an exciting older man with a sports car and a seemingly endless disposable income, the perfect combination to woo an impressionable teenage girl who dreams of life as a Parisian sophisticate. David charms the entire Miller family right up until the impending moment that his dream life proves too good to be true.

Sporting one of the year’s buzziest performances, An Education is much more than just Mulligan’s coming out party. Hornby’s second screenplay—and first not based on one of his own works—is a significant improvement over his first, 1997’s Fever Pitch. As in his best novels (High Fidelity, About a Boy and Juliet, Naked), he engages his reader/viewer with witty insight from appealing people suffering from light melodramatics.

In adapting Lynn Barber’s autobiographical essay, he has created his best female character. As Jenny, Mulligan possesses a winning innocence, a commanding presence, and a highly contagious laugh; I’m curious to see what she does in her next high-profile gig, April’s Wall Street sequel.

In any previous year, An Education would not have cracked the Oscar top five, but the expansion to 10 Best Picture nominees opened up a spot for this slight delight. That being said, it is little surprise, though dashedly unfair, that Danish director Lone Scherfig goes unnoticed in the direction category even as the film, its lead actress and Hornby’s script are named some of the year’s best. For the first time in weeks, An Education has given me a new film that I can wholeheartedly, unreservedly recommend.

Drew Wheeler