NOTES ON A SCANDAL / Richard Eyre (2006)

January 8th, 2007 by Scott Marks

Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Directed by: Richard Eyre

Written by: Patrick Marber, Zoe Heller

Genres: Drama

Cast: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Tom Georgeson, Michael Maloney, Joanna Scanlan, Shaun Parkes, Emma Kennedy, Syreeta Kumar, Andrew Simpson, Philip Davis, Wendy Nottingham, Tameka Empson, Leon Skinner, Bill Nighy, Juno Temple

Aspect Ratio: 1.85 : 1

Rating:

Though it would have been a perfect part for her, Joan Crawford could not have played the Barbara Covett role in Notes on a Scandal.

Ms. Crawford was a glamorous movie star, dammit, and in her heyday would never have allowed herself to be photographed in such a flaw-finding manner. Even in the dank, dark hold of Strange Cargo’s prison ship, what little light cinematographer Robert Planck allocates found her face.

Judi Dench certainly qualifies as a movie star and, unlike Joan Crawford, an actress as well, and her performance here is both fault and vanity free. My mother’s generation would get a wash and set every week and water would not touch their hair between beauty parlor visits. Ms. Dench spends much of the movie coiffed as though it’s the morning of her next appointment.

The reason for all this talk of Ms. Crawford is because throughout NOS, I found myself constantly reminded of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, the only one of her films in which Joan put away the glamour. Shift the setting from a rundown Hollywood mansion to an unruly British high school, recast Cate Blanchett in the sympathetic Crawford role and Dench as the domineering Bette Davis and you have an equally worthy battle of the superstar actresses.

Adapting Zoe Heller’s novel, screenwriter Patrick Marber’s (Closer) mordant voice-over narration gives us an all-access pass into the thought patterns of a bitter spinster with a titanic superiority complex. As Barbara Covett, Dench finds a level of pure evil that would make Freddie Krueger blanch.

If given the choice between being loved or feared, Barbara would quickly pounce on the latter. Her students live in mortal terror. They may stir when the final bell sounds, but they don’t dare exit class until a nod replaces Barbara’s scowl.

Enter new hire Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), an ex-party girl who settled comfortably into the position of pottery teacher. When asked to dinner, Barbara is shocked to find she has a husband (the brilliant Bill Nighy) twenty-years her senior, a teenage daughter and a son with Down syndrome whom the voice-over describes as a “somewhat tired court jester.”

Barbara is immediately smitten by Sheba, but it’s not the type of lusty infatuation that has caused some to erroneously dub this a “lesbian Fatal Attraction.” Barbara is not in this for the sex; she seeks a companion to grow old and sip tea by the fire with. Nor is director Richard Eyre interested in churning out another stock Hollywood thrill ride.

Barbara doesn’t miss a beat. The slightest lunchroom scuffle is noted, and settled, as she briskly passes by it. She needs more leverage to pry Sheba from her family and as luck would have it, Barbara happens upon her prey and a student (Andrew Simpson) going at it on school property. One takes great delight in watching just how far Barbara goes to milk this bit of knowledge in her quest to make Sheba hers. This is the kind of first rate, engaging escapist entertainment that’s long been lacking in contemporary genre films.

What’s truly amazing about Notes on a Scandal is its ability to infuse the lead character with such honest psychological insight and personal awareness. There is not a moment in this film where Barbara does not convincingly sell us on her motivation and reasoning. It is so nice to once again have a thinking person’s psycho to cheer for.

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