“An Education” captures the ache of first love but also the sting of first betrayal. It’s about the things unsaid, the dangers of what’s hidden, and the kind of learning no classroom can prepare you for.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 1, 2025

Bigelow’s Hurt Locker got the glory. But Lone Scherfig’s An Education is the better film

| Jun 5, 2024

It is ever so slightly warped, capped off with a delightful, cheeky soundtrack...

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 7, 2024

Adapted by Nick Hornby from a memoir by Lynn Barber, this is an enjoyably bracing portrait of a romantic misadventure.

| Sep 18, 2023

Carey Mulligan’s breakthrough performance in An Education deserves the affection it’s getting and serves as the film’s easiest selling point.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 22, 2023

Soundtracked by the sensuous jazz of the Swinging Sixties, the film is at once stylish and soul-searching, a thoughtful meditation on the pitfalls of grasping for adulthood too soon.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Jun 25, 2021

It is spoiled ... by a rather predictable script and a conventional denouement, and the narrow outlook to which it seems to subscribe.

| Feb 13, 2021

An Education offers the thrilling sight of a smart young woman in charge of her own sexuality.

| Jan 23, 2020

Lone Scherfig and her cast and crew give us all AN EDUCATION. Go straight to the head of the class with AN EDUCATION!!

| Nov 6, 2019

But it's [Carey] Mulligan who shines throughout, bringing a wide-eyed naïve endearing charm to her character, her intelligence and pragmatism making Jenny far more than just a silly schoolgirl.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 29, 2019

Nick Hornby wrote the screenplay by inflating a fragment of Lynn Barber's memoir, failing to disguise the thinness of the material.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 25, 2019

Treats the issues it raises as black and white rather than really exploring them in a satisfying way.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Aug 5, 2019

This is a charming coming-of-age film anchored by a star-making turn from lead Carey Mulligan.

| Original Score: A- | May 10, 2019

It's Lone Scherfig's subtle direction and Mr. Hornby's thoughtful script that make An Education such an interesting film, though.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 1, 2018

Scherfig manages this relationship superbly and it's this central lesson that makes An Education a film that will delight both the young and old.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2018

This is a nostalgically elegant, comically restrained, cleverly scripted film which, in parts, is also extremely moving.

| Aug 30, 2018

One of the chief pleasures of Lone Scherfig's crisply confident and charmingly comic coming-of-age drama is in seeing a teenage girl kick against the pricks for a change.

| Jul 6, 2018

An Education is so good, so intelligent that it invites little shocks of recognition or inspires debate.

| Feb 5, 2018

This is a lovely, delicious film with fine acting and a unique plot.

| Jan 17, 2018

What's good about Mulligan's performance is that it's subtle, and seemingly very natural. What's underwhelming about An Education is that all the drama that naturally occurs in a situation like Jenny's was missing.

| Original Score: B | Sep 11, 2017