Review: Notes On A Scandal
[Editor's note] Getting Blockbuster Total Access is the best decision I've made in a year. I'm signed up for the 3 movies at a time for $20 a month plan and I'm relishing every cinematic gem they throw my way. Two nights ago I watched Notes On A Scandal.
Based on Zoe Heller's 2003 novel and starring Academy Award-winning actresses Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench (or Dame Doody Dench as I often call her), this film is about two school teachers who form a twisted relationship around a big secret. Doody Dench is an aging relic of a teacher who spends her lonely time writing in a journal and taking care of her cat. Blanchett is the new, pretty pottery teacher at the school where Dench is part of the faculty. After Dench helps Blanchett break up a fight between two students, they form a close friendship. However, during a school play, Dench catches the new teacher having sex with one of the students in her classroom. Dench confronts the married teacher and she confesses that they had been having a whirlwind love affair for months. Smitten with the young teacher, Dench promises to keep her secret provided Blanchett end the affair. When Dench realizes that the affair had indeed not ended and feeling betrayed, she spills the beans and a media frenzy engulfs Blanchett, Dench, and the school.
What makes this film extraordinarily fascinating is the delusional and ultimately tragic figure that Dench portrays. Her primary relationship is with herself by means of a diary which she keeps compulsively, the only "intimate relationship" in her life. She seeks love and affection from younger women who eventually (and dramatically) realize that they got more than they bargained for in befriending Dench.
Goes highly recommended.
Based on Zoe Heller's 2003 novel and starring Academy Award-winning actresses Cate Blanchett and Dame Judi Dench (or Dame Doody Dench as I often call her), this film is about two school teachers who form a twisted relationship around a big secret. Doody Dench is an aging relic of a teacher who spends her lonely time writing in a journal and taking care of her cat. Blanchett is the new, pretty pottery teacher at the school where Dench is part of the faculty. After Dench helps Blanchett break up a fight between two students, they form a close friendship. However, during a school play, Dench catches the new teacher having sex with one of the students in her classroom. Dench confronts the married teacher and she confesses that they had been having a whirlwind love affair for months. Smitten with the young teacher, Dench promises to keep her secret provided Blanchett end the affair. When Dench realizes that the affair had indeed not ended and feeling betrayed, she spills the beans and a media frenzy engulfs Blanchett, Dench, and the school.What makes this film extraordinarily fascinating is the delusional and ultimately tragic figure that Dench portrays. Her primary relationship is with herself by means of a diary which she keeps compulsively, the only "intimate relationship" in her life. She seeks love and affection from younger women who eventually (and dramatically) realize that they got more than they bargained for in befriending Dench.
Goes highly recommended.
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