'An Education'

Went to the cinema to see 'An Education' yesterday afternoon (yes, I'm currently unemployed) and I loved it. That is, I loved the first 85% of it. The ending was dire. (Stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet.) Brilliant and quirky performances, perfect casting, wonderful set and costumes, interesting and surprising direction... all let down by a spectacularly mundane and cowardly finish. A sixteen-year-old girl (woman?) meets a very exciting and rather dangerous older man who makes a living through relieving old ladies of their fine art. The girl goes on to tell anyone who will listen - and many who won't - that life is to be enjoyed and school and university is by no means a recipe for success. She seems totally convinced of this. And then...and then. She discovers the older man is already married and thus a prick. The girl is then somehow able to go back to school to do her exams and then gets into Oxford and dates boys (not men!) and rides a bike and wears a blue sweater and stops smoking and wears ballet flats because that's what good girls do. Out the window goes her belief that a scholarly education is not as necessary as life experience, that the country is in a rut and beige and boring, that the most awful fate would be to end up "dead" like her (impossibly devoted) teacher. And all this in the final 20 minutes of the film.

So, I would like to propose a different ending. Here it is:

Girl finds out man is married. Man gets divorce from wife and marries girl. Girl and man live happily for several years. Man gets caught stealing art from old ladies. Man goes to jail. Girl, now in her twenties, goes to America. Girl becomes a member of high society through her good looks and extraordinary powers of manipulation. By now, we are in the 1970s. Girl flirts with drugs but they don't interest her. Girl realises she is nearly forty, with no career. Through her connections, she enters the film industry. Girl finds, to her great surprise, that older man from years ago is now out of jail and has conned himself into the world of Hollywood. He is dating a sixteen-year-old new girl. Original girl is jealous. Man suggests three-way. Three way happens. Original girl and new girl are more interested in each other. They ride off into the sunset. Man grows old and lonely. Original girl is killed in a bus accident. New girl gets old by herself. New girl, as an old woman, is robbed, in her own home, at knife-point. By total coincidence, the man who robs her - surprise!! - is the older man from years ago's illegitimate son. The end.

Not great, I know. I challenge YOU to write a better ending. The crazier, the dirtier, the weirder the better. Obviously.