Carey Mulligan does a fine job in the lead role, but Jenny is a problematic construction, and she's not the only one.
Jenny is 16 going on 17, and is markedly intelligent as well as quick-witted and self-confident, but she is also naive, particularly about men. She tentatively enters an affair with a fortyish fellow with a cool Bristol sports car. That much can be chalked up to naiveté. She is bothered that he is an unprincipled estate agent and a smooth and opportunistic liar, but not bothered enough to reject his marriage proposal. In spite of the fact that his proposal is apparently an impulsive response to a moment of jealousy, as well as the fact that he never-- not once-- invites her to his home, or says a single word about his family, she accepts his ring and drops out of school. That's not only an example of Jenny being naive; it also reveals how the writer-- the self-aggrandizing memoirist, Lynn Barber-- manipulates her story beyond plausibility, apparently in order to crucify her father.
Which brings us to Dad, a thankless role played by Alfred Molina using only two notes in his otherwise full-octave range. As a father, he is straight out of an essay by an aggrieved teenager. Accorded no complexity, no depth, not even any consistency, Dad begins as a dictum-spouting martinet determined to get his only offspring into Oxford, but then-- in a character change as abrupt as Dr. Jekyll's-- he completely reverses himself when Mr. Fortyish shows up with his posh car, lavish gifts, and equally lavish whoppers. Suddenly Dad thinks it's a jolly grand idea that his 17-year-old daughter quit school and marry an older man about whom he knows next to nothing. The father is a callow teenager's vision of an injudicious parent, a character sculpted by vindictive hindsight, not mature insight. (The mother is better only for being mostly silent and long-suffering. No insight there either.)
The film tries to seduce the audience, the way Jenny is seduced, with the fast car, great art and music, posh clothes and champagne. It might have worked, but only if the characters were believable enough to care a whit about them.
Jenny is 16 going on 17, and is markedly intelligent as well as quick-witted and self-confident, but she is also naive, particularly about men. She tentatively enters an affair with a fortyish fellow with a cool Bristol sports car. That much can be chalked up to naiveté. She is bothered that he is an unprincipled estate agent and a smooth and opportunistic liar, but not bothered enough to reject his marriage proposal. In spite of the fact that his proposal is apparently an impulsive response to a moment of jealousy, as well as the fact that he never-- not once-- invites her to his home, or says a single word about his family, she accepts his ring and drops out of school. That's not only an example of Jenny being naive; it also reveals how the writer-- the self-aggrandizing memoirist, Lynn Barber-- manipulates her story beyond plausibility, apparently in order to crucify her father.
Which brings us to Dad, a thankless role played by Alfred Molina using only two notes in his otherwise full-octave range. As a father, he is straight out of an essay by an aggrieved teenager. Accorded no complexity, no depth, not even any consistency, Dad begins as a dictum-spouting martinet determined to get his only offspring into Oxford, but then-- in a character change as abrupt as Dr. Jekyll's-- he completely reverses himself when Mr. Fortyish shows up with his posh car, lavish gifts, and equally lavish whoppers. Suddenly Dad thinks it's a jolly grand idea that his 17-year-old daughter quit school and marry an older man about whom he knows next to nothing. The father is a callow teenager's vision of an injudicious parent, a character sculpted by vindictive hindsight, not mature insight. (The mother is better only for being mostly silent and long-suffering. No insight there either.)
The film tries to seduce the audience, the way Jenny is seduced, with the fast car, great art and music, posh clothes and champagne. It might have worked, but only if the characters were believable enough to care a whit about them.