Notes on a Scandal
dir. Richard Eyre
2006


"What is the first and principle thing he does? What need does he serve by killing? He covets."
-Hannibal Lecter

"Youth is wasted on the young."
-George Bernard Shaw


Like Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction and Single White Female, Notes on a Scandal is ostensibly about the havoc a desperate, unstable person can wreak on an otherwise happy, ordinary life.

Judi Dench plays Barbara Covett, a hard-edged spinstress schoolmarm who keeps extensive diaries into which she pours her hatred, malice and will to dominate all life.

Cate Blanchette plays Sheba Hart, a latter day Emma Bovary trapped in a humdrum middle class existence.

Covett and Hart strike up a friendship which takes a sour turn when Covett witnesses Hart's daliance with a 15-year old male student. She confronts Hart, intending at first to turn her in, but deciding instead to keep Hart's secret as a means of cementing the bond between them.

Covett uses the scandal as leverage in a game of emotional blackmail. But the years of lonely bitterness left in their wake a pit of yearning so bottomless, that no harried mother of two could hope to fill it.

Disappointment festers into desperation for Covett who ups the ante to a pitch-perfect crecendo.

The story elements in Notes on a Scandal are familiar. It's your basic blackmail psychodrama. There's even a scene where Judi Dench signals to Cate Blanchette that she has a spot of cream cheese on her nose, a conscious homage to the early flirtation in Fatal Attraction.

But the fresh perspective and beautiful, lyrical prose of Judi Dench's narration set this film apart from its forebears.

The usual pattern for these movies is for a morally flawed or emotionally vulnerable protagonist to fall under the (initially) friendly spell of a character who slowly becomes more and more desperately dependent. In the second act, this character usually crosses the line into caricature, becoming violent, ranting and unstable.

Ostensibly a warning about bad behavior (infidelity, taking your friends for granted, sexual opportunism), these pieces end up being more about untreated borderline personalities. Glenn Close was just as likely to have become obsessed with Michael Douglas if they hadn't slept together. She was simply mentally ill.

This is not the case with Notes on a Scandal. Judi Dench's seething resentments were born of years of repression. She does not lash out violently. We have no boiled bunnies, no long speeches about friendship from the roof of a building as Cate Blanchette hangs from a flag pole, no one gets duct taped to a wheelchair. Her destructive influence is much more subtle, basic and realistic.

As for Cate Blanchette, her moral weakness is not depicted as a simple, understandable bad choice (like a one night stand or taking on a roommate without references.) Her daliance with the young student is a reflection of flaws woven deep into her character: an adolescent longing for a life less ordinary, a vague, difficult to articulate dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Her life is not a miserable one. Her husband is older, but he is a present, energetic and enthusiastic father. Her son is developmentally disabled, but capable, positive and well-mannered. Her daughter is moody and reclusive, but no more so than the average teenager. Her home is rumpled and cluttered, but warm and inviting. Her creative aspirations are supported.

The sexual politics here also play nicely. Had Blanchette been a vaguely dissatisfied husband who has an affair with a 15-year old girl, well, then we'd be getting into Humbert Humbert territory. But this film plays right up to the cliche that characterizes female victims of child sexual abuse as "exploited" and male victims as "lucky bastards" and doesn't give us any convenient outs. All moral speechifying in the film is self-serving and we are left to decide for ourselves what to make of her affair.

As with Covett, who describes the (from all appearances) well-behaved children of her school as knife-wielding crack addicts, Hart's problem is more one of perception than reality. And as with the two protagonists in In Cold Blood, their mutual delusions feed off of one another less than constructively.

Hart is like an old photo of Covett, before the years of loneliness have had their full toll. Each longs for intimacy. Each is drawn to youth. Each is willing to compromise the lives of the people they supposedly care about to fill the void in their hearts. Each is a vampire.

My one quibble with the film is that Phillip Glass' soundtrack (reminicent of Howard Shore) at times overwhelms the subtlety of the performances. It's easy to miss a wry turn of phrase or perceptive squint when you have a full orchestra blarring "THIS IS DRAMATIC!" in your ear.

Three stars. Dame Jason sez, if you understood ANYTHING about friendship, you'd check it out.