An Education - News Round Up

The 2009 Sundance Film Festival Preview



An Education teams one of Denmark's finest directors, Lone Scherfig, with British novelist Nick Hornby, and the results should certainly be interesting. It's a coming-of-age tale of a 16-year-old named Jenny (played by Carey Mulligan) set in 1961 London, who becomes involved with a much older man played by Peter Sarsgaard. It has what possibly what could be deemed as one of the most impressive who's who of British actors including everyone from Alfred Molina and Emma Thompson to Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike.


The 5 Films Likeliest To Cause A Sundance '09 Bidding War

Those tall, icy piles of matter smothering Park City every January aren't always snow — they could just as easily be discarded Sundance dreams. But as usual, a few lucky ones will avoid the freeze.

Amid the contraction and pocketbook panic gripping the independents and mini-majors this winter, predicting a Sundance bear market seems a safe, obvious choice for 2009. But it also seems relative — especially following a year when sales of festival films reportedly plunged 66 percent from their collective 2007 high of $45 million, and eight-figure buys like Hamlet 2 (and its subsequent seven-figure gross) signaled a reality check that had little or nothing to do with an imploding economy. Distributors need content; they just don't need to walk away with one film to show for $11 million.

So what will they be spending on — and for how much — over the next 10 days? We scoured this year's selections for a few intrepid predictions:

· An Education. Nick Hornby adapted his novel about Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a 16-year-old London girl whose coming of age is kick-started after meeting an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) in 1961. She's on her way to Oxford, he's on his way to a nightclub, holy Christ what will she choose? Word is that An Education is a starmaker for Mulligan, aided by another anticipated film at the fest (see below) and a supporting cast — Sarsgaard, Emma Thompson, Alfred Molina, Sally Hawkins — that will attract the likes of Sony Pictures Classics, Miramax and Focus Features for at least $4 million.

· The Greatest. Setting itself up as an In the Bedroom without the undercooked revenge subplot, The Greatest thrusts Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon into grief over the loss of their teenage son in a car accident. Mulligan appears as the dead kid's girlfriend, lessons are learned, Oscar clips ensue — again, if it's any good: Sundance's bead on middle-class white mourning is growing tired, and Brosnan's executive producer credit whispers "vanity project." But to the extent they even show up with any money at all, the Weinsteins and Paramount Vantage are suckers for this kind of stuff. It may not leave Park City with a deal, but we'll probably hear numbers between $4 million and $5 million throughout the week.

Sundance Unveils A New Star, So Does Ecuador

Remember the name Carey Mulligan. The twenty three old British actress is about to become an It girl. Everything is in place for it too. Yesterday at Sundance the fire marshall had to turn away ticket holders at the Egyptian Theatre because word was Mulligan’s star role in “An Education” was so hot. I hate to say it—because who knows what will happen—but Mulligan turns in an Oscar and award winning performance much on the par of Ellen Page in “Juno” in the Lone Scherfig (a gorgeous Danish director) film.

“An Education” is just about perfect, too: written by Nick Hornby based on the memoir of a British journalist, the early 60s suburban London story has all the makings of a substantial hit for any distributor. The cast includes Peter Saarsgard, Dominic Cooper, Emma Thompson, and a terrific Alfred Molina in this coming of age story. But it’s 23-year-old Mulligan playing a wise 16-year-old who just pops off the screen. The amazing thing, she’s just as memorable in “The Greatest,” a film seen on Saturday that was so good it prompted a standing ovation.

So 2009 should be the year of Carey Mulligan. Isn’t it interesting too that she’s already got powerhouse CAA talent agency on her side, with Kevin Huvane and Chris Andrews—who know talent—steering her along. Shades of Gwyneth and Cate!


"An Education," an early-'60s London coming-of-age fable from writer Nick Hornby and director Lone Scherfig. (This is a surprise of a different sort, in that Sundance has only started to become a major showcase for non-American films.) In a performance of Audrey Hepburn-esque starmaking intensity, young English actress Carey Mulligan plays 16-year-old Jenny, a precocious student, talented cellist and aspiring woman of the world who's trapped in the middle-class suburban dreariness of Twickenham, circa 1961.

As writer Hornby (the author of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy") explained after the vastly oversold downtown screening I attended, England in the early '60s wasn't yet, you know, '60s England. When Jenny meets a charming and handsome older guy who we can instantly tell is bad news, he knows about jazz and Ravel and art auctions and supper clubs and weekends in Paris; Carnaby Street and Twiggy and Brian Jones are still in the future. David, the smooth operator, is played by Peter Sarsgaard, who does such a good Ewan McGregor I convinced myself he was McGregor for a while.

David is in the vicinity of 30 and drives a sports car and has nice clothes and knows "colored people." He tells outrageous lies and charms Jenny's parents and gradually steers her off her track of Oxford-bound academic excellence and onto one of his own devising. On one hand, clearly a bad idea. On the other, as Jenny demands of her school headmistress (a forbidding cameo for Emma Thompson), what the hell can Oxford do for young women in profoundly unliberated early-'60s England? A long, dull grind of study followed by a long, dull grind behind a desk at spinsterish jobs like hers? At least hanging out with David is fun.

You could say that there's nothing surprising in the oft-told tale of the seducer and the schoolgirl -- hanging out with David is indeed fun, until the dynamic between them begins to shift subtly -- but this one's told superbly, with heart, humor, a marvelous supporting cast and a dazzling recreation of a long-lost, pre-Mod London. It's a movie with many wonderful small moments, courtesy of Alfred Molina as Jenny's dad or Dominic Cooper as David's more cautious best friend or the beautiful Olivia Williams as Jenny's favorite teacher. Fundamentally it belongs to the irresistible Mulligan as Jenny, a mouthy, awkward, almost-sexy combination of innocence and wisdom. You almost never see movies about teenagers that treat them with this much respect; sure, Jenny is governed by her hormones and her half-realized dreams of the future, but she's also much smarter than the grownups around her. As her relationship with David grows murkier, it becomes less and less clear which one is the adult and which the child.

Sundance: An education and 'An Education'

So much for preamble. On to An Education. This slight, charming, lulling coming-of-age story tells of teenaged Jenny (Carey Mulligan, poised for breakout after this showpiece and her central part as dead-boy's-girlfriend in The Greatest), and David (Peter Sarsgaard), the mysterious thirtysomething man who introduces her to a world of sophistication beyond her stodgy London suburb in dull, pre-Beatles Britain. Danish director Lone Scherfig (Italian For Beginners) has an appropriately gentle, feminine touch. (Is it okay for me to say feminine? This year's festival is a casual marvel when it comes to the number of female filmmakers in the mix, and I trust that from now on, no mention of sexual equality will be necessary since the situation will just be ... normal.) The friendly and soothing script is adapted by the redoubtable Nick Hornby of glorious High Fidelity and About A Boy fame from an autobiographical magazine piece by British journalist Lynn Barber.

And certainly the cast is plummy and hip: Sarsgaard plays a fine balance of suave and slippery as the gentleman caller; Mulligan, 22 at the time of filming, emerges from schoolgirl togs to look Audrey Hepburn-yummy; Dominic Cooper and an effortlessly funny Rosamund Pike nearly steal the pic as David's ever-so-raffish friends; and Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour fuss and fumble as Jenny's tea-cup-rattling parents, a pair that might have been played by Graham Chapman and Terry Jones in an episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.


HOW TO MAKE GREAT MOVIES ON A SHOESTRING

And yet, bad or good, the films were easier to enjoy than last year's grim parade. BBC Films' An Education, for instance, lived up to its Sundance hype. This delicately told age-gap drama from Denmark's Lone Scherfig sees 23-year-old Carey Mulligan stepping deftly either side of the child-adult divide as the A-level schoolgirl who finds herself being charmed by Peter Sarsgaard's older man. The world of riches and travel his character opens up threatens the girl's progress out of Twickenham to Oxford University. A sharp critique of the meaning of learning, An Education couldn't be more timely.

SUNDANCE RUNDOWN





An Education (dir. Lone Scherfig) – Thousands of journalists and industry wags and filmgoers arrived at Sundance without a clue who British actress Carey Mulligan was. One week later, she was the industry’s hottest name and not because of her supporting role opposite Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon in The Greatest. No, expect to be hearing much more about the coming-of-age period film An Education and Mulligan’s starring turn as a schoolgirl in 1961 England whose dreams of A-levels and Oxford are put on hold when she falls for a much older (and somewhat shady) man (Peter Sarsgaard). Scripted with wit and intelligence – would we expect anything else? – by Nick Hornby and directed with polish and sensitivity by Lone Scherfig, An Education avoids nearly every Lolita tendency, instead concentrating an on a sometimes hilarious and sometimes devastating critique of what it meant to be a middle class girl on the eve of the Sexual Revolution. Featuring memorable supporting turns by Alfred Molina, Olivia Williams, Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper, An Education was swiftly swooped up by Sony Pictures Classics. This was the finest film I saw at Sundance and I’d expect it to be an Oscar contender.

Sundance 2009: In the Loop puts rest of the fest in the shade




There's been some aggro this week. On Wednesday, a Variety critic called John Anderson punched Jeff Dowd, the producer who inspired the character of the Dude in The Big Lebowski, when the latter pestered him about his unfavourable response to a doc called Dirt! The Movie. Disappointingly there was no return punch, nor was there any blood. I guess you take what you can when the business of buying and selling has been so slow. After the Brooklyn's Finest deal at the weekend there was a light flurry of small sales. The highlights have been Sony Pictures Classics stumping up about $3m (£2.2m) for Lone Scherfig's drama An Education, which stars new British It girl Carey Mulligan as a modern day Holly Golightly. IFC, which buys movies every five minutes to feed its growing VOD pipeline, took the Norwegian Nazi zombie horror flick Dead Snow from the French sales agency Elle Driver (how cool is that name?), while Magnolia Pictures bought the mumblecore 2.0 comedy Humpday, a real crowdpleaser all week.

As the weekend approached buyers continued to swirl around the Anna Wintour doc The September Issue and the drama The Greatest (again starring Carey Mulligan), plus several studios were interested in the Uma Thurman comedy Motherhood (co-star Minnie Driver inflicted a five-song set on the after-party on Wednesday). There's been plenty of acclaim for Lee Daniels's drama Push: Based on the Novel By Sapphire and Oliver Hirschbiegel's Five Minutes of Heaven, which tackles the Troubles. I liked Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor as gay lovers in the wild and wildly uncommercial comedy I Love You Phillip Morris, as well as The Cove, an eco-doc about dolphin slaughter in Japan that plays like a thriller and has adaptation potential. I walked out of an interminably drippy romance called Peter and Vandy and tried – believe me – to flee the Polish brothers' 1960s-set comedy Manure (it's too easy, so I won't go there) starring Billy Bob Thornton and Téa Leoni. Alas I was thwarted, flanked as I was on one side by a middle-aged woman who laughed spikily in all the wrong places and was not about to get up for anybody (even if you were having a heart attack) and on the other by an elderly man who fell asleep within the first couple of minutes. He had the better time.

An Education stars British actress Carey Mulligan as an early '60s teenager caught between marrying an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) and chasing a riskier life of creativity and independence. The movie was acquired by Sony Classics — and won the international drama audience award.

Mulligan, 23, was poised for a Sundance starmaking moment with two films. In the other, The Greatest, she's a teenager who tells her deceased boyfriend's family she is carrying his baby. By the time she turns up this summer as Johnny Depp's lover in the 1930s gangster movie Public Enemies, Mulligan may already have broken through.

As the festival began, she was cautiously hopeful about mercurial "festival buzz."

"As a young actress, when you haven't done big films, you come up against the name thing time and time again, where you're not enough of a name and studios don't want you," she said. "If there's anything that comes out of Sundance, it might make it slightly easier for me to get seen."

Others came with distribution locked up, but were seeking — or found — validation of other kinds.

DRAMATIC GRAND PRIZE: "An Education"

An almost painfully perfect recreation of early-'60s London -- before it really became '60s London, that is -- and a starmaking performance from Carey Mulligan as mouthy, precocious, cello-playing and French-speaking 16-year-old Jenny, so eager to escape her suburban family that she falls for suave, older, Mr. Obvious Bad News (Peter Sarsgaard). Scripted by English novelist Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity") and directed by Danish helmer Lone Scherfig ("Italian for Beginners"), this is marvelously well-constructed period entertainment with a feminist bite. One can argue it's less substantial than the next three films on my list, each completely different from "An Education" and from each other. But the way to settle a four-way tie is with your heart, and I loved this film as I loved no other at Sundance this year. Sony Pictures Classics apparently felt the same way, which is why "An Education" should reach theaters later this year.

AN EDUCATION REVIEWS
http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=reviews&Id=11531
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939422.html?categoryid=2471&cs=1
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Sundance-Review-An-Education-11635.html


SOURCE

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