An Education tells the story of Jenny (Carey Mulligan), a pampered middle class kid living in London who dreams of going to Oxford University to read English. Her dull routine of school, cello lessons, awkward dinners with her parents and droll lunches with friends is turned upside down one day when she meets the charismatic and cultured David (Peter Sarsgaard) who whisks her off her feet by taking her on romantic breaks to Paris and to classical concerts with his exciting friends. As time passes, however, it becomes apparent that David and his joyous clique are not quite what they seem.

Despite a few solid actors An Education proved to be a terrible film. The usually dependable Alfred Molina gives a hammy performance as Jenny’s father and Emma Thompson could have been given more to work with as Jenny’s formidable headmistress. Carey Mulligan played her role well but there’s no getting away from the fact that Jenny is actually a downright dislikeable and irritating character. We’re supposed to feel sorry for Jenny and root for her while she treads the rocky roads of her ‘dual education’ (in life and the classroom), but just how much you can pity a privileged west London private school girl while she agonises about getting into Oxford and experiences her first broken heart I’m not sure. Even when Jenny reaches her lowest point she’s so annoyingly precocious in her handling of the situation that the emotional punch is just lost. On top of this the question of what actually happens to David is left unresolved.

It’s unclear what director Lone Scherfig was trying to achieve with An Education; if she wanted to make a damning social comment about pampered middle class lifestyles then she’s succeeded, but the fact that this is supposed to be some cutesy coming-of-age drama makes it so vomit-inducing that it’s barely watchable. Other films about the social elite, such as Bright Young Things and A Good Woman, work because they expose the vacuity of wealth and status and because the scripts have humour. If An Education had the balls to be a bit grittier it may have worked, as it is everything about the storyline and the characters is just too bourgeois for anyone to really care.