The girl in question is Jenny, played with infinite grace by newcomer Carey Mulligan. Jenny is a smart, attractive girl with a bright future ahead of her. She's slavishly studying and working to get into Oxford. Her life is basically mapped out for her. That is until she meets David(Peter Saarsgard), a 35 year old man with a slick tongue suave air of confidence about him. He's been places Jenny has only heard about. He listens to the same music as her, watches the finest films, and dines at the finest restaurants. She is at first cautious, but soon finds herself taken with the first interesting person she's ever met.
This being 1961, women didn't have nearly the options they would have now. Jenny's parents, played by Alfred Molina and Cara Seymour, are caring but naive. Her father is strict when it comes to her studies, but little else. Her mother plays the background but clearly knows more than she's perhaps been allowed to let on. When David first introduces the idea to them of taking their daughter out on a date, they are taken by his charm and maturity. Her parents are smart people, but that didn't get them anywhere in particular. They want their daughter's life to be simpler, like any parent would. To them, David presents an opportunity for that to happen.
David, of course, isn't all that he seems. He's into some shady dealings along with his best friend Danny(Dominic Cooper). Danny's girlfriend, Helen(Rosamund Pike), is a sophisticated airhead who doesn't quite understand the far more cerebral Jenny. David is the key to another world for Jenny. A world she has only had the opportunity to read about. She enters it willingly, risking everything she's worked her entire life for.
It's a story we've seen in movies time and again, but rarely carried out with such precision by all involved. Hornby's script, based on a memoir by journalist Lynn Barber, is tight and shows flashes of his earlier works. Jenny, much like Hornby's other protagonists, is addicted to pop culture and high society. Not obsessively so, but in the way of someone who's only been allowed to study them from afar, or has been deprived of them completely. Carey Mulligan's performance is stunning, and the transformation that takes place in Jenny is jaw dropping as she goes from naive child to world weary woman in the span of 90 minutes. That's a product of the script, but also in Mulligan's portrayal. It is one for the ages, and if she's not nominated come Oscar season it'll be a travesty.
It must say something that I wanted desperately to snatch up Jenny and get her away from that slimy David character. To make sure she followed through on her goals. Hey, I'm a dude. I knew what kinda guy he was the instant he pulled up in his fancy car and picked her up. "You're too good for him!", I wanted to scream at the screen. But it was a lesson she had to learn on her own, and while I won't spoil the outcomes of this wonderful film, I will say that I felt the ending was a bit rushed. Fortunately, everything else is spot on perfect.
There's a lesson here to be learned. An education, I guess you could say, about discovering what truly matters to each of us and whether it's worth giving out life to. It's about finding one's own place, carving out out own little corner of the world. No matter what the goal, it's always going to take hard work to do it. There are no short cuts. No easy ways out, even if they come in the form of a handsome stranger.
8.5/10
