N.Y. Times critic Manohla Dargis today posted a Sundance ’09 summation piece, in which she hugs Unmade Beds, Big Fan, Big River Man, In the Loop, Crude, Cold Souls and Lulu and Jimi.

And yet she makes no mention at all of Lone Scherfig‘s An Education . And I saw Manohla in line for this one! She obviously isn’t required to agree with me that it was far and away the best film of the festival, but to ignore it is… what’s the right word? Curious? Obstinate? Bewildering? Not mentioning a film that everyone has either praised or at least acknowledged as a huge festival favorite obviously implies a negative attitude.

But I love Dargis’s interpretation of Steven Soderbergh‘s The Girlfriend Experience, to wit: “Clearly far more interested in the metaphoric usage of flesh peddling than its impact on real bodies, Soderbergh turns prostitution into an allegory about moviemaking in which the whore is the filmmaker, her clients are the producers and the scum of the earth is — you guessed it — the critic who reviews her work (negatively).”