‘An Education’

Danish director Lone Scherfig always has an easy touch with relationships, never overplaying the hand she’s been dealt. That grace suffuses her enchanting new film, “An Education,” a coming-of-age story set in 1960s London with Carey Mulligan as its star and perhaps the year’s most refreshing new face. Though Mulligan is, in the technical sense, not a discovery, having waltzed nicely through a number of smaller roles (including playing a Bennet sister in 2005’s “Pride & Prejudice”), this is the one that should cede a rapid rise. There is more than Mulligan to recommend here, particularly Peter Sarsgaard as the very good, very bad playboy who gets a bit of an education himself.

-- Betsy Sharkey