NOTES ON A SCANDAL
*** (out of ****)
Starring Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson, and Michael Maloney
Directed by Richard Eyre & written for the screen by Patrick Marber, from the novel by Zoe Heller
2006
92 min R
�Notes on a Scandal� is about as visually uninventive as �Little Children� but more successful with trashy bored infidelity. �Scandal� is Oscar-competing with �Little Children� for Actress and Adapted Screenplay, while also nominated for Score and Supporting Actress. It isn�t quite as trashy as I�d like it to be but still wicked fun. Late in it, Cate Blanchett tells her obsessed secret admirer �You don�t love me. You don�t even like me.� These are among the truest words ever spoken about infatuation: sometimes it has nothing to do with respect.
The admirer is Judi Dench, a bitter, world-hating old maid of a battle ax, who soldiers on hatefully at a British public school. (But they call them private schools over there � those crazy Brits!) Dame Judi is endearing the way all �I hate everyone especially myself� types can be endearing. She gradually goes all �Strangers on a Train,� sans murder, when she falls for the loopy new art teacher played by Cate. When Dench finds out that Cate is having a naughty-naughty with an underage boy (Andrew Simpson), she finds a way of wiggling her way into the younger woman�s life. Dench plays a character named �Covett� while Cate plays one named �Sheba.� Sweet.
Dench is good, mean, and takes real pleasure in biting off words like they were the limbs of fallen foes. Blanchett matches her step-for-step, capturing precisely the amount of strong personality and �fraidy-cat sexiness that can provoke obsession. Third billing goes to Bill Nighy, an British character who�s rapidly become That Guy I Like Seeing Everywhere, as Cate�s old-ass husband. He would seem a saint if it didn�t crop up that he�d left a previous marriage to get-it-on with his student Cate, who was 20 at the time. �Notes on a Scandal� never reduces its characters to types, and this is no more apparent than Blanchett�s underage lover. At times he borders on calculating � that he lies is not nearly as revealing as the blankness he uses when caught in a lie � but at the same time we understand why he is legally a victim.
The overwrought score by Philip Glass is perhaps not overwrought enough and Richard Eyre�s direction is too tasteful. Still, Patrick Marber�s (�Closer�) script is tight, allowing the characters to be completely fleshed-out, yet occasionally caricatures. More importantly, it sees them sympathetically but without apology. You can�t forgive the lonely old maid or the insecure woman tumbling unfulfilled into middle-age or the underage Romeo, but you can�t quite blame them either � unless you�re so insecure in your marriage that you have to be self-righteous and boring. Also, Marber and Eyre let not one but two men descend into spit-flying furors. They�re the cuckolded husband and the schoolmaster (Michael Maloney, who spent most of the �90s trying to kill Kenneth Branagh).
More Various & Sundry Oscar Nominees (including �The Good German�).