Rarely have I seen Dame Judi Dench on top of her game as with Notes on a Scandal. She's usually a good show in any film she's in, but here she's perfect for the role of Barbara, who has been a professional teacher in a high school all her life, and is well respected, but can't seem to get enough of her attachments. There's a first one to a woman we won't see during the course of the film (chiefly because she put a retraining order on Barbara), and then enters in Sheba (Cate Blanchett, beautiful as ever, which may be a small part of the point), who becomes a focal point of attention for Barbara. And then when she discovers a terrible secret regarding her new 'friend'- an affair Sheba's having with one of her 15 year old students- there's a subtle form of blackmail that comes into play, and that becomes a further fantasy in her notebooks. Throughout all of this Dench never breaks from making this a totally believable, broken, but very solid woman who's gone through a life of misery only to want to seek happiness on the other side. One might almost feel sorry for her, in the end, if she wasn't such a dingbat. It might be also my favorite Dench performance I've seen to date (albeit I'm not all up on her complete catalog of work). She's not only convincing on the level of the obviousness of her character, vindictive but sweet, sensitive but cunning, and always with that underlying wit that the British have even in the most dire of circumstances, and I couldn't see anyone else playing her after a while.
But it's not just her that makes Notes on a Scandal worthwhile. The screenplay by Patrick Marber, from what must be an equally absorbing and humanistic book, is sharp and intelligent in ways that American filmmakers wish they could make mind-f***er movies like today. There's understatement here and there that undercuts some scenes, like when Sheba has to confess to Barbara after being caught with the boy the first time, a very slight tension each knows on each side. And even when things start to get worse and worse, and the truth comes out in the worst way possible (not just for Sheba, destroying her family which includes her husband played by the great Bill Nighy and her two dysfunctional children, but for Barbara as well), there's still some glimmers of dark comedy in there, which one might think would be impossible considering the dangerous pit-falls that could come with such topical, practically controversial subject matter. My favorite of this is when Sheba finds out her own darkest secret from Barbara, and inexplicably in her old 80s makeup again no less.
Not that I thought the film was without flaws- chiefly that, oddly enough, it wasn't long enough at 90 minutes (structurally it ended up working out, but considering how good the characters made the material out to be, I was surprised how quickly Marber and director Eyre got into the affair material), and Phillip Glass's musical accompaniment isn't quite fit with the rest of the material most of the time (I was wondering when Errol Morris would show up, truth be told). But I overlook these flaws mostly for the sake of how superlative everything else is done. The performances are all uniformly compelling and with equal measures of understandings in neuroses in one another, and the ending particularly leaves a chilling spell not unlike one found in the Cable Guy. It's probably the best "chick-flick" you haven't yet seen this year.
But it's not just her that makes Notes on a Scandal worthwhile. The screenplay by Patrick Marber, from what must be an equally absorbing and humanistic book, is sharp and intelligent in ways that American filmmakers wish they could make mind-f***er movies like today. There's understatement here and there that undercuts some scenes, like when Sheba has to confess to Barbara after being caught with the boy the first time, a very slight tension each knows on each side. And even when things start to get worse and worse, and the truth comes out in the worst way possible (not just for Sheba, destroying her family which includes her husband played by the great Bill Nighy and her two dysfunctional children, but for Barbara as well), there's still some glimmers of dark comedy in there, which one might think would be impossible considering the dangerous pit-falls that could come with such topical, practically controversial subject matter. My favorite of this is when Sheba finds out her own darkest secret from Barbara, and inexplicably in her old 80s makeup again no less.
Not that I thought the film was without flaws- chiefly that, oddly enough, it wasn't long enough at 90 minutes (structurally it ended up working out, but considering how good the characters made the material out to be, I was surprised how quickly Marber and director Eyre got into the affair material), and Phillip Glass's musical accompaniment isn't quite fit with the rest of the material most of the time (I was wondering when Errol Morris would show up, truth be told). But I overlook these flaws mostly for the sake of how superlative everything else is done. The performances are all uniformly compelling and with equal measures of understandings in neuroses in one another, and the ending particularly leaves a chilling spell not unlike one found in the Cable Guy. It's probably the best "chick-flick" you haven't yet seen this year.