Notes on a Scandal
At this point I have to question the competence of any filmmaker who hires Philip Glass to compose an original score. But then maybe Glass’s loud, insistent, droning music is the right fit for a movie that climaxes with Cate Blanchett braying like a wounded mule while surrounded by paparrazi. The score and this scene capture the tone of “Notes on a Scandal”: histrionic and glib. Blanchett plays Sheba Hart, an art teacher at a low-rent London public school who has an affair with a 15-year-old male student; Dench is Barbara Covett, the lonely, delusional, predatory lesbian who leverages her discovery of the liaison into a friendship with Sheba. Director Richard Eyre quickly dashes any hope that he would explore the psychology behind the growing phenomenon of sexually predatory female teachers when he develops the affair in an ill-conceived flashback, sapping it of any tension. This is the sort of movie where Barbara shows up at Sheba’s house and Sheba’s daughter is screaming: “He’s younger than I am!” Well, duh. That’s the whole point, and yet Eyre completely misses the point, because he gives us just the sketchiest idea of why Sheba might find such a dalliance irresistible. Another example: Sheba’s husband (Bill Nighy) demands, “Why?” Sheba: “I don’t know!” Neither will you.
I can’t recall ever disliking a Judi Dench performance before her broad, shrill work here. We’re never intrigued by Barbara because there’s no mystery; we always know exactly what she’s thinking, and we’re neither intrigued nor horrified. We just wait, patiently, for her to set her trap. I suppose we may wonder why it takes Sheba so long to figure out what Barbara is up to. “Notes on a Scandal” spins its wheels a lot, and yet it’s only 93 minutes long. You may feel that it ends just when it could potentially become interesting — at the moment where Sheba has to start rebuilding her life.