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NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Directed by: Richard Eyre.
Written by: Patrick Marber, based on the novel by Zoë Heller.
Produced by: Scott Rudin & Robert Fox.
Director of Photography: Chris Menges.
Edited by: John Bloom & Antonia Van Drimmelen.
Music by: Philip Glass.
Released by: Fox Searchlight.
Country of Origin: UK. 92 min. Rated: R.
With: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson, Phil Davis, Michael Maloney, Juno Temple, Max Lewis, Joanna Scanlan, Julia ,& Shaun Parkes.

Oh, the things we do for sex and companionship. Malcontent to be married and spending her days attending to her teenage daughter and a son afflicted by Down syndrome, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) becomes entangled in a workplace affair. Unfortunately, that workplace happens to be an inner city secondary school and the affair involves a 15-year-old.

Never having taught before and being a woman with “popular politics,” optimistic Sheba takes a shine to the young and artistically talented Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson). Because Steven’s grades make him ineligible for enrollment in an elective course like art, she tutors him afterschool. Taking a different kind of shine to his teacher, the boy’s interest incites Sheba’s craving for change.

But this is not a story about a scandal; it’s about the machinations of Sheba’s coworker, self-described battle-axe Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), revealed in her voiceover of her meticulous journal, which is made up of trenchant excepts from the film’s source material, Zoë Heller’s novel What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal. Barbara’s life, plated in “the drip drip of long-haul, no-end-in-sight solitude,” becomes centered on Sheba’s dilapidated life. Her discovery of Sheba’s secret and her role as Sheba’s confessor give her both intimacy and power in the younger woman's life.

The film makes clear the staleness of Barbara’s life, where her weekend’s high point is a trip to the launderette. Besides her fascination with the “artfully disheveled” Sheba, the spinster’s feelings are coupled with class resentment. (Sheba has inherited a posh townhouse.) However, where Heller’s novel was implicit, screenwriter Patrick Marber and director Richard Eyre are explicit: Barbara is a lonely lesbian seeking companionship through blackmail. By making Barbara yet another predatory lesbian, her main motivation becomes more common and less disturbing. Whereas her scathing point of view was all too seductive in the novel, it's now too easy for viewers to distance themselves from her. It’s a character change that reeks of studio testing and playing it safe. Instead of a mystery with plenty of clues, we get a high-pitched drama with a pat solution. And if the film’s denouement is to be believed, Sheba will not be the last of Barbara’s unknowing victims.

Nevertheless, Marber and Eyre’s movie is a fascinating portrait of psychological breakdown, carried by brilliant performances and the ruthless dialogue lifted from the book, even after the film takes a sharp melodramatic turn. Barbara’s catty, sharp-tongued observations are punctuated to perfection in Dench’s narration. The extremity found in her voice, body, and even in the careful choice of her ill-fitting, lower-middle-class apparel create one of the most detailed, full-bodied characters I’ve seen in a long time.

Blanchett is just as noteworthy here. With skill that wasn’t as apparent in her recent films Babel and The Good German, her Sheba culls the combination of sympathy and disdain. Her slow awakening to Barbara’s uneasy investment in their friendship, her increasing distress about her actions, and her eventual return to her husband (played with regret and subtle pain by Bill Nighy) enrich the film as it reaches its climax of slaphappy hysteria. Zachary Jones
December 27, 2006