Directed by Lone Scherfig. Starring Carey Mulligan, Peter Sarsgaard, Alfred Molina, Dominic Cooper, Rosamund Pike, Olivia Williams, Cara Seymour, Emma Thompson. 15A cert. gen release, 95 mins

London before it began to swing is the setting for this entertaining drama, writes DONALD CLARKE

YOU CAN say a lot of things in favour of this witty, insidious adaptation of Lynn Barber’s memoir of temporarily misspent youth, but you couldn’t quite say it speaks to all eras. The cultural recalibrations that set in during the early 1960s altered British society more radically – two ghastly World Wars noted – than any other conflagration of the 20th century.

Barber, the delightfully savage interviewer for the Observerand elsewhere, remembers an era where the most desirable men wore thin ties, drove Jaguars and didn't expect their dates to speak directly to the waiter. A portion of liberation was in sight, but the last detainees of the Ancien Régimewere still squirming in their chains.

An Educationtakes place in Twickenham, a remote moon of London, two years before, as Philip Larkin would have it, sex arrived in the UK. It's 1961. The startlingly confident, vocally flexible Carey Mulligan plays Jenny, a bright girl who, as the film begins, is working hard to secure a place at Oxford.

Jenny’s largely decent but hopelessly hidebound father (Alfred Molina) and her more clear-eyed mother (Cara Seymour) have trouble envisaging life beyond the plane trees, milk floats and music appreciation societies. Far from imagining that their daughter will grow up to write rude things about Marianne Faithful (as Lynn is want to do), their greatest hope is that, after she secures her degree, she will settle down with a nice doctor or a successful businessman.

One rainy day, disobeying the prime commandment of the responsible pupil, Jenny allows an older man in a sports car to offer her a lift. Initially suspicious, she eventually yields to the fellow’s attentions and gets drawn into his louche, superficially glamorous lifestyle.

David (Peter Sarsgaard), a charming but dubious operator, hangs out in Mayfair with a collection of classless social butterflies whose only concern is where the next gin and tonic is coming from. He hears that Jenny, obsessed with Juliette Gréco and French cinema, longs to go to Paris, so he arranges just such a trip. Her thoughts full of nice dresses and evenings at the Ritz, the confused girl begins to allow her studies to slide.

So far, so familiar. What makes the story queasily resonant is that Jenny’s father allows himself to be beguiled by David and implicitly colludes in the teenager’s seduction. Dad is not, you understand, a bad man, but the ancient notion that it is acceptable to flog your daughter to the highest bidder still hangs around in his Precambrian brain.

An Educationis, then, a pretty film with nice clothes and beautiful people that, nonetheless, gets to grips with some unattractive human instincts. Directed by Lone Scherfig, graduate of the Danish Dogme movement, and written by Nick Hornby, who needs no further introduction, the film does, however, not go all the way in exhibiting the courage of its convictions. Brilliant as Mulligan's performance is, she is a 24-year-old actor and looks it. Think how much more astringent the film would be if the star were, like the character, 16.

That slight retreat from peril is all the more conspicuous when set beside the film-makers’ dangerous decision to stress – or at least mention – that David, a slum landlord, a minor swindler and an associate of Peter Rachman, is from a Jewish background. We are wandering dangerously close to stereotypes here.

For all that, An Educationremains a superb entertainment with an ominous black stripe down its back. The knowledge that social change is coming offers hope for Jenny and, reclining in leafy Twickenham, a potential source of complaint for her parents. It's the generation in between, however – with their car coats and lounge music and Ronson lighters – who are about to be made strangers in their own country. Ghastly as David's tribe are, you almost feel sorry for them.