| RATING: | 80% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Clever look at the psychological stultification, White supremacy, cultural snobbery and emotional mediocrity inherent in White middle-class English life and the resultant desire of the affluent young to violate a norm of that culture: 'Never take sweets from strangers'. Like Passe Ton Bac d'Abord the difficulty here is trying to keep awake when having nothing to keep awake for. And in keeping one's virginity long after its sell-by date.
But the central character here has nothing to replace the emptiness of her life except a pretentious doting on high culture that so often like (as a character says about listening to classical music) attending one's own funeral. Albeit that she is engagingly superficial, by the film's end she merely swaps one form of materialism for another. This subverts the movie's ostensible claim to be about innocence corrupted when the culture she is born into is also a corrupting influence; an Oxford education being for those who cannot think for themselves.
The film is delightfully witty and all the performers are excellent. Peter SARSGAARD is perfectly charming as the perfect charmer and Carey mulligan is a natural as the thirster after knowledge who wishes to drink deep of the waters of the university of life. The ultimate question here is: What is the point of a good education. The movie has no real answer because the well-educated do not make the world a better place any more than the not-so-well-educated. A something-for-nothing culture is inevitably going to lead to the emotional heartache shown here and the desire of corrupted adults to live through their immature charges by infantilising them.
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