Directed by: Richard Eyre
Starring: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy, Andrew Simpson
Barbara Covett is an elderly schoolteacher who suffers from acute loneliness. She writes of this in her diary, which is filled with entries depicting her contempt for her students and her desire to find someone to spend her days with other than her sickly cat. She is the type of teacher students pray they don't get, mostly because she comes across as a stern, aloof taskmaster who takes little time relating to them. Her job has become routine until tall blonde Sheba Hart begins working at the school. Sheba's arrival inflames her desires. They become friends. Sheba sees Barbara as a kindly mentor while Barbara sees Sheba as a potential mate.
Their relationship is at the heart of Notes On A Scandal, which becomes very complicated when the married Sheba begins an ill-advised affair with a 15-year old student. Barbara discovers the affair and grows jealous, using the affair as a way of keeping Sheba close to her while acting as a confidant to her friend. Barbara isn't at all interested in the boy's well-being or even Sheba's necessarily. Based on her diary entries, which we hear in cold voiceover narration by Dench, she disapproves of Sheba's family, which consists of a husband about 20 years her senior and a child with Down Syndrome. She sees them as "bohemian". She may even see Sheba in that light. Barbara is clearly infatuated, but doesn't seem to like her very much. She doesn't seem to like anyone that much, but she's lonely enough that anyone who is kind to her will become her obsession.
The introduction of 15-year old Stephen Connolly (Simpson), a gifted art student who clearly has a crush on Sheba. She's flattered by the attention and growing tired of her husband, which is a recipe for disaster when she and the teen begin an affair. Once Barbara discovers the affair, she works a confession out of Sheba and vows to stay quiet. Her belief is that her relationship with Sheba will grow closer and more intimate because they are now bonded by this secret. This delusion is shattered when Sheba is unable to comfort her after her cat dies due to family commitments. What happens next is a mixture of revenge, spite, and jealousy on Barbara's part, which I will not reveal.
Notes on a Scandal is thankfully not the type of film where Barbara comes after Sheba or her family with a knife and all of the issues are sidestepped in favor of a slasher ending. There are complications in all of the relationships involved and the movie deals with them in brutally honest fashion. It does not pretend that either Barbara or Sheba are sympathetic people, although we shake our head as Sheba travels down a road that could only lead to catastrophe. How does she justify her behavior? How does Barbara feel she is behaving as a loving, caring friend when her plan to win Sheba involves tacit emotional blackmail? Does she even acknowledge her homosexuality?
Notes on a Scandal takes very tricky subject matter and makes it fascinating. Dench and Blanchett both play amoral characters we can't stop watching even though they're rather despicable people. That's a credit to both actress' considerable skills. There's no one we can really sympathize with. Even the boy comes off as a bit of a manipulator himself. The person who attracts the most sympathy is Richard, but his relationship with Sheba began when he was a college professor and she was his student. Perhaps Sheba thinks this gives her some justification for her actions. In recent years, Bill Nighy has come on the scene as among the most dependable of British character actors and his work here is no exception.
The movie is like a train wreck that we know is going to happen and can't stop, but yet we can't look away from it either. The damage these people cause each other is substantial. Each is a victim in his/her own way. Except for Barbara, who walks between raindrops and manages somehow to leave the wreckage behind to continue to look for someone to spend her empty days with. The next woman is in for some trouble.
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