The Education of Jane Cumming

Edinburgh, 1810. Teachers Marianne Woods (Clare Dunne) and Jane Pirie (Flora Nicholson) embark on their dream of an independent life together and open a boarding school. Their lives are changed forever when a wealthy aristocrat (Fiona Shaw) enrols her 'illegitimate' 15-year-old grandchild from India, Jane Cumming.

Miss Pirie and Miss Woods struggle to integrate Jane who remains an outsider among her classmates. When her grandmother insists they look after her over the summer, private and professional lines blur, affection between them grows and they start to form an unlikely family. But tensions rise as the new term begins. The teachers are overwhelmed with the girl's increasing desire for closeness and their own changing relationship. Jane Cumming demands to be taken home to her grandmother.

Sophie Heldman’s beautifully controlled mise-en-scène allows for desire, unease and social constraint to register subtly but to devastating effect. Clare Dunne and Flora Nicholson are superb as Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, giving the relationship an unusual combination of warmth, intelligence and suppressed longing, while a commanding Fiona Shaw invests Lady Cumming Gordon with civil – thus all the more disquieting – menace.