The Film That Changed My Life

(Originally published 04/04/16)

Most of my friends know that Breakfast At Tiffany's is one of my favourite films, but very few know that An Education, the one based off the acclaimed memoir by Lynn Barber, is also one of my favorites, alongside the one starred by Audrey Hepburn in 1961.

An Education arrived in a very special, and should say, controversial moment of my life. I had always been the kind of innocent boy who was craving to see the world, and would often lock myself in my tiny bedroom, where I would study Italian verbs for hours, and trace routes in European maps. Escaping my boring sixteen year old reality, in which I would only go to high school in a small town in Mexico, which was dominated by a drug war, did not hurt at all.

In this film, we get to know Jenny Mellor, a young 16 year old girl, who lives in 1960's London, who's dying to go out to explore the world, go to Paris, wear black, and listen to fine French music of the likes of Juliette Greco. She would either do that, or lock herself at Oxford studying latin after college. And although a bright student, that didn't sound as exciting as sitting down to eat at an exquisite bistro of the cinquieme arrondissement.

To Jenny's surprise, she meets a man much older than her, who introduces her to a fascinating world of arts and glamour, which is attractive to her interests. Parallel to this, out of the screen, I was maintaining a weird relationship with a man who was twelve years my senior, who introduced me to a world of knowledge, interesting people, and an underground party scene that pretty much resembled that of Andy Warhol's infamous Factory.

In my very own story, and, during my final year of high school, when I was about to apply to UNAM (the most distinguished university in Mexico) it was a matter of harsh comments and gossip, when classmates and professors found out that I was in a relationship with someone much older than me... and even worse, that this was a homosexual relationship! Contrary to that, my family was, if anything, fine with it, especially when they realised that he was a very intellectual doctor and artist, who came from a good family, which meant that there was nothing to be worried about.. or so we thought.

In the same way as Jenny, I was introduced to a world that very much differed from the one I could find in that small town that I was so desperately trying to escape from. Just as she fell in love with David, "her jew", I fell in love with Guillaume.

This film however, further from being just about the girl who wants to be free with the man she loves, depicts a unique perspective on what education is really about, by telling us that "sometimes, an education isn't by the book". Most times, the only way to grow is by learning from life's lessons.

David takes Jenny to Paris for her seventeen birthday, date until which she always wanted to wait to lose her virginity. As it was to be expected, Jenny loses it to David, and goes back to London a new woman. She doesn't want to go to Oxford anymore to be bored studying latin, so that she can graduate and find a job, but this time get more bored teaching latin, when she could instead go to Paris and have fun.

And that resonated so much in me. What is the point of education? I would ask myself many times. What's the point of it, if it means that I have to stay home studying, bored, and day-dreaming about an exciting life, when I could go out with Guillaume and actually live one?

"You don't have to only educate us, you need to tell us why you're doing it"

Like Jenny, I also lost my virginity when I was seventeen, to that older man whom I so much admired; apparently I was learning so much more with him than I did at school. I was as refined as a seventeen year old can be, I knew about music, cult films, and those were things that he loved about me. I knew that I could easily unwrap in any social circle that came to mind, so I started to think that maybe I did not need university that much. It was okay if I didn't study as much for my exams, because I was already smart, so I believed that I would be fine.

After a series of events that I will not reveal because I hope you watch the film, and after dropping out of college without giving her Oxford exams to get engaged to David, Jenny finds herself devastated when she discovers the secrets of her man, who ends up leaving her behind with no college, no love, no Paris... and no Oxford.

In my own story, and after losing my virginity to Guillaume, he confessed that actually he would never be able to be faithful to me, because it was just not in his nature, and instead, offered me a disgusting arrangement which completely devastated my idea of real love. The warnings from so many people were now constantly in my head, but the last straw was when my UNAM results came in, and they read "Your application has been unsuccessful". In my eyes, what they actually said was something more like "You didn't get in because you didn't study enough for being hanging out with Guillaume". When it came to that, there was no one else to blame but me, and I think it is until now when I write these lines, that I can finally talk about the real reason as to why I was not accepted at UNAM.

An Education is a film that makes you question what is the true goal of academic education. Are we only studying to be little bored robots, in the hopes to graduate, to then get bored at a badly paid job for the rest of our days? Or is there something else in education that we still need to comprehend? Isn't it easier to go to Paris with a wealthy man, and listen to jazz, rather than spending six hours studying in my little bedroom? The answer, I guess, is in knowing that, it is much more rewarding to go to Paris on your own, than having to depend on a man to take you... and it is right there when education makes sense. That's its purpose: to build us as independent, autonomous, critically thoughtful individuals, so that we can go to Paris, London, or New York, by our own means, after all of those hours of study, education and dedication that we once thought would be worthless.

No matter how bad they ended, or how much they made us lose, both stories, Jenny's and my own, turned out to be the greatest life lessons that made us who we are today. They educated us.

After a year lost, Jenny applies to Oxford one more time to rebuild the life she once imagined she would have. And as for me... I left to Mexico City either way, in the hopes of growing my career and finding that love that I always hoped for. But my relationship with Guillaume didn't end, instead, it evolved to a friendship which seemed the most appropriate thing for both of us.

An Education is the film that changed my life, because my life is that film... sort of. And even though I don't feel like that innocent little boy anymore, I still want to go to Paris and go across the routes that I once traced on European maps. Today, more than ever, I know that preparation is the only way to become who we want to be, and that, no matter how stressful classes might be, in the end, life and school nourish and take us to the place where we have always wanted to be. And as painful as it was to lose myself, now I see that first year of my relationship with Guillaume, as an old and distant chapter in my life, without which, I would not be the person that I am today.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

2024 update: This story is without a doubt one of the most formative experiences that I have gone through. Back in the day, I thought it would be a good idea to write it down as my first ever blog post, but I was still too young, and too trapped in my friendship with Guillaume, to know two things : 1) that I was being groomed; and 2) that the worst was yet to come.

While the main purpose of this post was to draw parallels between Jenny's Oxford tragedy and my tragedy with UNAM, my story with Guillaume isn't fully explored. How he approached me, how he chased me for months when I was only sixteen, the way he groomed me, the way he controlled me during that first year, his infamous underground parties, and, most importantly, everything that happened in the subsequent three years of our "friendship".

I'm happy to announce that, for the past year, I have been working on a memoir which explores this story in depth, and offers a social commentary on the ever-present issue of grooming and sexual abuse in society. Guillaume’s world emerges as a parallel universe within our tumultuous, and drug cartel-consumed town, where innocence is interrupted, and exchanged for fleeting moments of euphoria, which once left me as a broken boy ensnared in the allure of self-destruction.

Stay tunned for announcements in the next couple of months!

Edua x