That was James Campbell's advice, "Follow your bliss." And very sound advice it was, too, except that I kept waiting for him to follow it up with, "This is what bliss is." Carey Mulligan plays a 16-year-old girl whose working-class parents are struggling to put her through a public school, or private school as it would be known in the USA. The kind where you have to pay tuition. Their fondest hope, almost desperate in its intensity, is that she be admitted to Oxford, earn a degree that will lift her out of her current modest circumstances, and find a good husband.
Mulligan's character, Jenny, has a number of things going for her. She's bright. She gets all As except for the odd B in Latin. She plays a burnished cello. She's learned to speak French and loves everything about France. (The story takes place in the 1960s but the allusions sound like the 50s.) And, as important as anything else, she's as cute as a button -- petite and pretty, along the lines of Holly Hunter with a dash of Sarah Miles. The word "cute" is completely apt. You ought to see her dimpled little smile. She looks barely post menarchical.
Then along comes Peter Sarsgaard with his charming patter and his shiny maroon sports car. ("It's a Bristol. They don't make them anymore.") Sarsgaard charms not only Mulligan but her slightly dull and stodgy parents. When the local nerd, Graham, comes to her birthday party he brings her a Latin dictionary and spills cake on his lap. Sarsgaard brings an armful of gay presents. He's wealthy. He's winning. He's heterosexual. He enjoys Ravel and he knows art. He may be thirtyish, but what more could a young girl want? And older, handsome, rich, suave, sexually frisky man.
I knew the moment that Sarsgaard wormed his way into her bored, frustrated, blissless life that tragedy lay just around the corner because that's the kind of movie this is. A young woman is torn between self actualization and, after Sarsgaard proposes marriage and deflowers her, a life as the escort of a man who will add fun to her life with jazz concerts and romantic dances in the rain. In movies like this, it should come as no surprise that there's an unpleasant secret hiding behind Sarsgaard's broad smile and allure. And so there is.
Sarsgaard is actually pretty good. His British accent sound authentic enough to me, though he and I are both Americans. And -- he's convincing too, no matter how different his roles are. He was one vicious bastard in "Boys Don't Cry" and a retiring but affable editor in "Shattered Glass." Here, he's a kind of con man. But he pulls it all off.
Carey Mulligan's performance is equally good. She's required to develop from a pretty, buttoned-up teen into a woman who has been betrayed and has learned something about her inner strength from the sad gest. And she pulls it off too. So do her parents, especially Alfred Molina as the father with the big mustache, bulky jaw, and sloping forehead.
The story is dressed up with images of Mulligan's slightly shabby but decent parlor, visits to Oxford and Paris, bluesy jazz, and cocktails and kisses, but at heart it's rather banal stuff. (The title has a double meaning.) I mean, it's not badly done at all, it's just that, despite its particular features, it fits so readily into an established genre. The only surprise is that, by the end, the next-door nerd hadn't matured into a reliable, confident scholar and potential mate.
Mulligan's character, Jenny, has a number of things going for her. She's bright. She gets all As except for the odd B in Latin. She plays a burnished cello. She's learned to speak French and loves everything about France. (The story takes place in the 1960s but the allusions sound like the 50s.) And, as important as anything else, she's as cute as a button -- petite and pretty, along the lines of Holly Hunter with a dash of Sarah Miles. The word "cute" is completely apt. You ought to see her dimpled little smile. She looks barely post menarchical.
Then along comes Peter Sarsgaard with his charming patter and his shiny maroon sports car. ("It's a Bristol. They don't make them anymore.") Sarsgaard charms not only Mulligan but her slightly dull and stodgy parents. When the local nerd, Graham, comes to her birthday party he brings her a Latin dictionary and spills cake on his lap. Sarsgaard brings an armful of gay presents. He's wealthy. He's winning. He's heterosexual. He enjoys Ravel and he knows art. He may be thirtyish, but what more could a young girl want? And older, handsome, rich, suave, sexually frisky man.
I knew the moment that Sarsgaard wormed his way into her bored, frustrated, blissless life that tragedy lay just around the corner because that's the kind of movie this is. A young woman is torn between self actualization and, after Sarsgaard proposes marriage and deflowers her, a life as the escort of a man who will add fun to her life with jazz concerts and romantic dances in the rain. In movies like this, it should come as no surprise that there's an unpleasant secret hiding behind Sarsgaard's broad smile and allure. And so there is.
Sarsgaard is actually pretty good. His British accent sound authentic enough to me, though he and I are both Americans. And -- he's convincing too, no matter how different his roles are. He was one vicious bastard in "Boys Don't Cry" and a retiring but affable editor in "Shattered Glass." Here, he's a kind of con man. But he pulls it all off.
Carey Mulligan's performance is equally good. She's required to develop from a pretty, buttoned-up teen into a woman who has been betrayed and has learned something about her inner strength from the sad gest. And she pulls it off too. So do her parents, especially Alfred Molina as the father with the big mustache, bulky jaw, and sloping forehead.
The story is dressed up with images of Mulligan's slightly shabby but decent parlor, visits to Oxford and Paris, bluesy jazz, and cocktails and kisses, but at heart it's rather banal stuff. (The title has a double meaning.) I mean, it's not badly done at all, it's just that, despite its particular features, it fits so readily into an established genre. The only surprise is that, by the end, the next-door nerd hadn't matured into a reliable, confident scholar and potential mate.