NOTES ON A SCANDAL

Director: Richard Eyre (Iris)
Starring: Judy Dench, Cate Blanchett, Bill Nighy

Despite Truffaut's auteur theory on cinema, I believe that film is a team sport. Like a football team, the best films usually have the most individuals stepping up in their roles - the director, editor, actors, cinematographer, production designers, composers. Maybe the director is the quarterback, and can have the most effect on how the game plays out, but it's obvious it can't be done alone. To press on with this annoying sports analogy, you can still have a good game even with big flaws in the team, especially if you have a star player. Notes on a Scandal is a very iffy team, but with a couple of hall-of-famers running the huddle. I'll call it 2006's film equivalent of the Kansas City Chiefs, a frustrating team with a great running back and ...

Okay, I'll stop now. For your sake and mine.

So, Notes on a Scandal? To begin, this film had a cheesy, cheesy story. Actually, let me add some emphasis to that: A CHEESY story! The film follows the disasterous (and tabloid headline grabbing) affair between a young bohemian art teacher (Blanchett) and her 15 year old student. Throw in a romantically carniverous lesbian confidant/stalker (Dench), and you've got a story that would bring a ratings boost to any number of cable channels, or soap operas. What this script does have besides the cheese, however, is some meaty writing for Dench's character. She is fully formed in a way that TV never approaches, and runs the gamut of emotions from sly puppy love, to raging, rejected anger, to wicked, pitiful lonliness. I'm sure this is what attracted Dench to this role. It's a plum role, and Dench gives a peach of a performance. She will be nominated for an Oscar, I have no doubt.

Blanchett's role is a bit less realized in the script, but there's still enough to intrigue. She's asked to give a young wife and mother who fools around with a child some measure of gravitas. It's a hard sell. I found Blanchett to be quite a good salesman, but in the end the product still sucked and I didn't buy it. I don't believe that that's what this character should be like. So I give Blanchett kudos for her effort (very much so in fact!), but I didn't believe in the character at all.

Dench plays a curmudgeonly old secondary school history teacher who narrates the tale through her diaries. She is alone, regrettful, and unstable. She longs to be loved. She has become tough (or maybe she always was), but she wants to be soft. Blanchett as a young art teacher certainly is soft. She's wild and sweet and loving and trusting. She is married to her one-time college professor (Nighy), and is a wonderful mother to a child with Down's syndrome. Despite this, she's still filled with a youthful exuberance for life that Dench desperately wants to feel.

Eventually, Blanchett's lust for life leads to a ridiculous affair with a 15-year-old boy. Dench's character finds out about this and (in effect) blackmails the young woman into a sort of relationship. It creepily borders on romantic for Dench, and grows more terrifying for Blanchett over time as she learns of Dench's true intentions.

Despite my aversion to the basics of this story, I did find the details intriguing. I mean, how many juicy roles like this are there for two woman these days? Not many, that's for certain. I did like much of the Dench character. She was extraordinarily well rounded. Blanchett's character, as I've said, was a less well-written role, but nonetheless I very much liked what the actress did with it. As a whole, I think that these two actors probably lifted this film more than a whole grade for me. They turned a fairly silly bit of story-telling, into a touching and creepy character-study.

Standouts: Dench, and to a lessor degree Blanchett, don't just stand out, they protrude.
Blowouts: The basics of the story were just silly.

Grade: B