If you're having issues dealing with the lapse between the DVD releases of AMC's Mad Men, here's a nice stopgap solution. What we have in the latest film by Danish director Lone Scherfig (The Birthday Trip) is a condensed, London-based version of Mad Men without the cutthroat advertising milieu and social upheaval, but with plenty of the props, music, and clothes from the suddenly hip early '60s. While waiting on the third season of that TV show, your thirst might be quenched by musings from newspaper writer Lynn Barber's memoir, part of which was adapted into An Education.

An Education isn't really about upheaval per se. It's a screamingly standard story about a girl (or boy) of great intelligence stuck in a time and place that isn't as brilliant as she (he) is. An eye-opening experience - usually a romance - is also a crushing one. It makes her a better person in the long run and gives her the wisdom to pursue her dreams. We've seen this kind of thing a million times (Stand By Me, A Room With a View, Good Will Hunting) and the film certainly doesn't impress with any narrative innovation - odd considering the script is by Nick Hornby (About a Boy). However, the buzz about star Carey Mulligan is bang on, and without her An Education would be mired in its formulaic mud.

Jenny is a proper 16-year-old English schoolgirl getting ready for entry to Oxford University. She's got a bit of a rebellious streak in her and a feminist bud that has her questioning the expectations inherent in her life as a woman. She argues with her dad Jack (Alfred Molina, Spider-Man 2) about school and his never-ending list of hobbies and classes he insists she needs to ensure her admission. She's holds on to an idealized image of France, to the point of harboring fantasies about escaping the lowbrow environs of Twickenham and living in Paris, watching films and reading great literature at cafes beside the Seine - in the original French.

One of those required hobbies is the cello, which is how she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard, Jarhead). He's the kind of painfully charming, urbane, dangerously Jewish bright light in an otherwise dull town that captures youthful imagination and doesn't let go, regardless of how questionable his behavior may be. In short order she gets involved with the much older man, smitten with his seemingly glamorous lifestyle and worldly wisdom. But he has a deep dark secret that eventually bursts Jenny's bubble.

The education of the title is twofold. Needless to say it refers to Jenny's Oxford aspirations, but more critically it's the life lessons she picks up during her brief romance with David. It's about Jenny's perception of herself; one being that David, his friends Helen (Rosamund Pike) and Danny (Dominic Cooper), and her literature teacher Miss Stubbs (Olivia Williams) all force her to rethink. The film puts an emphasis on the value of real experience, what David calls the "university of life", even if that experience is morally and ethically dubious.

And make no mistake - it is dubious. The age gap is just the most overt manifestation of the dodgy water Jenny navigates. David and Danny seem to be flush with pounds at all times, giving Jenny the opportunity to visit Oxford, Paris, go to art auctions, the dog races, and frequent the swank restaurants of her dreams. That she turns a blind eye to how she's afforded these luxuries is part of her learning process.

An Education focuses (perhaps relies) so intensely on Mulligan's performance that it's easy to excuse the film's trite story and Scherfig's realization of it. If you're expecting a stuffy dad, imperious headmistress, attractive spinster teacher/role model, and a '60s-style Holly Golightly makeover you won't be disappointed.

Much in the way Mulligan rises above the material, the supporting cast manages to make you forget they're playing stock characters. Williams (currently slogging through the dreadful Dollhouse) as the spinster teacher Miss Stubbs and Pike (Pride & Prejudice) as Helen, the anti-intellectual social gadfly, are particularly strong. Both actresses bring dignity and smarts to roles that could have easily been as cartoonish as they sound.

But the film belongs to Mulligan (a dead ringer for Katie Holmes, but with more talent) and her turn as a 16-going-on-30 that is never less than believable, warts and all. She gives Jenny all the arrogance and curiosity that goes with the territory of adolescence and seamlessly couples it with a festering irritation with the constraints imposed by the school and social mores. Jenny is hard to like, but she's easy to understand, and though the impulse to take her over your knee on occasion is strong, it doesn't make the character any less empathetic-and that's totally down to Mulligan. She's still not going to beat out Sandra "Hollywood box office gold veteran" Bullock come Oscar time, but, hey... a girl can dream.

An Education opened in Hong Kong Thursday.

(HK Edition 01/23/2010 page4)