the best thing about an education is two scenes with peter saarsgaard in a room with a 16 yr old. the first, he is in a tanktop and formal pants, laying on a hotel room bed, asking his schoolgirl lover to show him her breasts. after she lowers her borrowed nightgown, he moves across the room, and replaces the straps. it is delicate, loving, power grabbing, sexy, and horribly patriachal. the second is as he deflowering her. he kids around with a banana, she talks about her adulthood, though she is just 17. they eventually sit on a couch, her prim and contained, him sprawling, her clothed, him shirtless.

saarsgard has this talent for appearing earnest while being cagey. the seductive cad as innocent enough, not innocent, but appearing to be just calm, just placid enough to get a way with a fairly large amount of shit:

the bisexual who seduces seinna miller and then jon foster, a unstable triad of selfish desire remade as libertine freedom in mysteries of pittsbergh (the last scene, where miller drops the coffee after discovering foster ass up next to him in bed--he languidly asking her to come back)

seducing liam neeson's kinsey with dry scientific talk in the middling motel room on that first search for homosexuals, in condon's biopic

the hiding of gender of a same sex lover for a husband and wife producing team in the dying gaul

even the rapist in boys don't cry, or what ever he was doing in garden state, or the killer as cop in flight plan