This beautifully observed film is anchored by a series of performances acted with perfect pitch by its stars and supporting cast, led by the remarkable Carey Mulligan, and a truly extraordinary script by Nick Hornby. The coming of age plot is, perhaps, a little formulaic but that really takes second place to a series of wonderfully engaging characters who surround Ms. Mulligan's 16/17 year-old Jenny as she falls a little to hard for the appealing (and older) rogue played by Peter Sarsgaard.
One annoying little piece of trivium. The University of Oxford does not now and did not in 1962 admit undergraduates. Undergraduates are admitted by individual colleges at the university. So the letter that Jenny receives in which we learn whether she was accepted for a place would have come from a college and not the university as a whole.
And one amusing detail: Rosamund Pike who plays Dominic Cooper's decidedly non-academic blonde girlfriend actually attended Wadham College, Oxford! Takes an Oxford alum to play a dumb blonde, I suppose.
One annoying little piece of trivium. The University of Oxford does not now and did not in 1962 admit undergraduates. Undergraduates are admitted by individual colleges at the university. So the letter that Jenny receives in which we learn whether she was accepted for a place would have come from a college and not the university as a whole.
And one amusing detail: Rosamund Pike who plays Dominic Cooper's decidedly non-academic blonde girlfriend actually attended Wadham College, Oxford! Takes an Oxford alum to play a dumb blonde, I suppose.