Getting Schooled

Last night, I turned down an invitation to go eat bbq because of a squeamish stomach (saving myself for today's vegan feast, my birthday gift to myself) and went to the movies with R to see a new film, An Education. I had read enthusiastic reviews galore about this new film, which tells the story of a young girl in either the late 50s England or early 60s... there was the song "A Summer Place," which I remember as early 60s, but there was also Audrey Hepburn updos and hula hoops, which might be 50s, and talk of "beatniks."
The main character was a 16 year old, very bright, very out of place in her boring striver's household and neighborhood. Her father, played by Alfred Molina, had to be one of the most memorably obnoxious characters I've seen in a long time, and seeing him captured the sense of being a teenager, simultaneously knowing very little, but knowing one doesn't belong here, among these boring and hypocritical walking dead adults. In other words, we definitely see the world through the eyes of the main character.
This girl, the brightest in her class, meets up with an exciting older man, probably in this mid to late 30s, who charms her and everyone around her, and predictably seduces her. How he manages that is hard to say, since he seems rather transparent to me, in his Humbertian way, but the young girl who plays the main character is a terrific actress, both in her innocent and experienced incarnations, and the screenplay is shapely and well put together, as is the film as a whole.
Go and see it before it goes away.