156 - Notes on a Scandal review

Over the past few years, there have been an increasing number of news stories concerned with female teachers having illicit relationships with their students. The stories are sensationalistic in their presentation, worthless when compared to serious world news, and often accompanied by ridiculous analysis, with the double standard of it being more acceptable for an older woman to commit statutory rape on a young man than the reverse frequently rocking the issue.

“Notes on a Scandal” is a film about a high school teacher who begins a sexual relationship with a student but doesn’t treat the scenario as a lewd joke. In fact, the presentation of the twisted affair occasionally treats the legality like a footnote – the moral consequences of infidelity as or more important than a discrepancy in age.

Cate Blanchett plays Sheba Hart, the new art teacher at a London high school. She’s a flighty, often naïve woman, feeling entitled to an immoral act or two thanks to an unhappy marriage to her husband Richard (Bill Nighy) and the stress of taking care of her mentally disabled son. Sheba becomes fixated on Steven (Andrew Simpson), a 15-year-old student who supplies her with the right excuses to do the wrong thing. Their meeting places are about as glamorous as they deserve to be; classrooms, train yards, and alleyways become their motel room.

But the security of her adultery is compromised as Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), a fellow teacher, catches Sheba and Steven in the act. Barbara, a closet lesbian with the mindset that forbids self-acknowledgement of homosexual desires, has already latched onto Sheba. The discovery of Sheba’s paramour gives Barbara the leverage she wants; lord the knowledge of the affair over Sheba’s head, receive all the attention she desires.

“Notes on a Scandal” becomes a psychological thriller of an unusual kind. It’s interesting, fairly realistic, and for the most part avoids the contrived developments that tempt thriller writers everywhere. Dench earns her Oscar nomination, painting shades of gray that makes choosing sides difficult, if not impossible. Is Barbara crazy or cunning, evil or simply lonely?

Similar ambiguity applies to Blanchett’s portrayal of Sheba; has her ethical and moral transgression earned her this one-sided, suffocating frenemy? True, Steven was the one who pursued her, but as a boy half her age, it’s impossible to attribute the aftermath to him. We can all likely agree that Sheba deserves punishment, but is blackmail at Barbara’s hands enough? The best insight of “Notes on a Scandal” is that social isolation plays a key role in the rotten behavior of both women.

The film’s pacing is brisk, and the ending arrives almost too quickly to check your cell phone clock. But as I left, I was puzzled by how clean, even sterile, it all was. It breaches fascinating issues but seems concerned with dirtying itself by an embrace of the material. Even Barbara, the narrator and sole character whose mind we have direct access to, is so aloof that she can’t admit her own infatuation with Sheba. The aforementioned news stories about these torrid happenings may be nearly worthless, but they certainly capture the public’s imagination. It’s almost scandolous that the filmmakers couldn’t have gone further with the juiciness of the material, though a well-crafted and entertaining thriller is nothing to give a bad report about.

3 out of 5