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Easy to resent the implied moralistic edge in An Education, a tale of a conceited little madam – a smart, restless 16-year-old in early-60s London – who thinks she knows better than her elders, and pays the price. But the film doesn’t underline the lesson, doesn’t overplay the whole scales-falling-from-her-eyes bit, and features a cast who consistently aim to amuse as well as make a point. Best of all, it has Carey Mulligan as Jenny (our heroine), a performance that hits precisely the right note – naïve without being clueless, sweet and sympathetic yet too headstrong and cerebral to be totally likeable, let alone victimised.

Jenny is stuck in the ditchwater-dull suburbs (actually Twickenham), going to the kind of school where girls play lacrosse and walk with books on their heads to improve posture – though her parents aren’t rich, just attentive (she’s their only child). “This whole stupid country is bored!” declares Jenny, living precisely in the moment described by Philip Larkin in ‘Annus Mirabilis’, “between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP” – and already looking forward to the revolution her generation would unleash just a few years later, at the end of the decade. Meanwhile she reads Camus, listens to Juliette Greco and dreams of going to Oxford, where she plans to “look at paintings, watch French films and talk to people who know lots about lots”. Then one day she meets David (Peter Sarsgaard) who’s nearly twice her age, drives a sports car and goes to actual classical-music concerts followed by “a spot of supper” with his glamorous friends – and Jenny’s hooked.

It’s a delicate relationship to play, but the film pulls it off. Sarsgaard doesn’t overdo David’s pasty-skinned creepiness, correctly surmising that he’s not a predator so much as a small-timer. He’s borderline-pathetic in their first bedroom scene, revealing a taste for baby talk (he calls Jenny “Minnie Mouse”, and wants her to call him “Bubble-Up”) – and you might say the film over-protects its heroine, letting her keep control, but that’s important given her trajectory (otherwise she’d just be a Victim) and besides, the way Mulligan plays her, Jenny’s far too poised and brilliant to turn into a mouse. Maybe it’s because we know she’s based on Lynn Barber – the British journalist who became renowned in adulthood for her in-depth, often withering profiles of famous men – but it’s always clear that Jenny, despite her youth, is an extraordinary person, even at the risk of being less sympathetic.

Yes, she’s still a child, licking cake-mix off the egg-beater even as she lies to her parents about her relationship – but she’s also sharp and confident, treating Art and Culture as her birthright. When we glimpse her at the classical-music concert she wears a look of sated pleasure, like a piglet sucking at its mother’s teat. “Best night of my life,” she tells her Mum later, and Mulligan delivers the line without dreaminess – because Jenny’s always known that she’s meant for the good life, so she’s matter-of-fact when it finally arrives. She has contempt for ordinary people and their rough way of speaking (schoolfriends call her a “stuck-up cow”), respects only creativity and intelligence; taken to task by the headmistress (Emma Thompson), she’s annoyed not so much by being told what to do, more by the fact that the older woman isn’t arguing her case properly. Even at the end, her contrition is expressed in terms of mind, not emotion: “I didn’t understand”.

The film still has cheap, simplistic moments. Don’t be a rebel, advises Jenny’s dad (Alfred Molina), they don’t want any rebels at Oxford; “No, they don’t want people who can think for themselves,” she counters sarcastically, and it sails right over his head (“They certainly don’t!”). Yet even Molina ends up making something rather wonderful of this dried-up, insecure little man, terrified of “teddy boys” and only really comfortable when talking about money; there’s a great scene when he goes off on a wild rant about money not growing on trees – and you feel how he starts to get creative, inspired by his subject, turning this petit-bourgeois moment into a performance only he can appreciate. Elsewhere, Matthew Beard contributes a funny cameo as an awkward “jeune homme serieux” and Rosamund Pike refuses to be defeated by the stock character of the dumb blonde, filling out her (admittedly poor) dialogue with glimpses of kindness.

In the end, An Education isn’t about Right vs. Wrong, or foolish kids learning their lesson – it’s about youthful dreams, and the process of putting away childish things. What’s finally most depressing about David aren’t all the things Jenny finds out about him (which I won’t spoil here) – it’s that, far from being an emissary from a far-off world, the world of her French-speaking dreams, he actually lived just around the corner. Her adventure leads her back into herself – and maybe that’s the point, that the 60s Generation had to stop dreaming of escape and start changing the suburban world of their parents before the Revolution could begin. All this, and the fab Carey Mulligan too.