By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Richard Eyre
Starring: Bill Nighy | Cate Blanchett | Judi Dench | Juno Temple | Max Lewis | Philip Davis
Country: united_kingdom
Year: 2006
Running time: 97
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0465551/
Michael says: “Richard Eyre follows-up IRIS and STAGE BEAUTY with a real romp of a thriller in NOTES ON A SCANDAL. There’s a lot of excess in SCANDAL, and the entire thing really lives and dies by Judi Dench’s performance as Barbara Covett, an aging, lonely, battle axe of a teacher who fixates on the new, whispy art teacher, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett). Fortunately Dench is more than up for the task, biting through her clipped lines with the piss and vinegar a battle axe should wield. When Sheba comes to this middle class school to teach art, she is buffeted by the rowdy juvenile delinquents until Miss Covett steps
in to rescue her. We see the world through Barbara’s eyes, or rather, her scathing journal, which Dench delivers in, for once, gloriously delicious voiceover. Dench has nothing but scorn for her co-workers, her students, and the world around her, but something about Sheba intrigues her, and she is quickly taken by her fey beauty. While a friendship develops between the two, Barbara wants more, and she gets it after discovering that Sheba is having an affair with one of her students, despite (or perhaps because of) an older husband (Bill Nighy), a teenaged daughter (Juno Temple) and a son with downs syndrome (Max Lewis). Once Barbara sinks her claws into Sheba, she just doesn’t want to let go.
“I suppose you could complain about the shrewish portrayal of the bitter, aging lesbian, but who cares. NOTES ON A SCANDAL is delightful, over-the-top, campy fun. Blanchett’s Sheba is so clueless, so self-involved, that it’s hard to feel sorry for her as she indulges her whims and is manipulated by Dench’s scheming Covett. Despite the sick obsession Covett develops, you may find yourself rooting for her as she takes the Hart family apart to satisfy her own needs. Blanchett and Nighy each get delightfully shrill scenes where they are allowed… no encouraged… to chew up the scenery, and do so with all the aplomb of thespian’s of their caliber. But as I mentioned before, this movie belongs to Dench, and she takes it all the way home. After the film, we stood outside remembering our favorite lines to endless gales of laughter. My favorite? Barbara’s response to Sheba’s dire prediction that she could go to jail for years… ‘It’ll fly by!’ Okay, you had to be there. 4 cats.”