Notes on a scandal

Cate Blanchett is one of the most talented actresses working. I think she and Kate Winslett are tops as far as female actors go. Judi Dench is the consummate actress. She is always top notch, even if she rarely performs in movies I have any desire to see. Put them together in a movie where they are often holding information back from each other and you have one powerhouse performance film. I mean, wow, watching the two of them go back and forth in the climax of this movie is something great to behold. The climax itself is a bit disappointing, but watching them certainly makes up for it.


Blanchett and Dench star as high school teacher, and with Blanchett being new to the area, Dench quickly befriends her. Dench keeps a diary where she writes down everything important that happens on any given day and a lot of that is heard by us int he form of the classic voice over narration. I was not surprised to see that this was a book first because the language of the narration is stunning. It is incredibly literary in its descriptions of clothes and actions. It seems unnecessary to a film, because we can see the clothes, but it becomes vital for us to hear Dench's words as it helps us get to know her better. And, the better we know her, the more clearly we come to understand that she is not all there. She is a very lonely desperate woman who has no clue how a person is supposed to behave. To be honest though, Blanchett's character is not too much better. Bored at having married an older man, she takes up a steamy affair with a 15 year old student. The kid played by Irish actor, Andrew Simpson gives off a very honest performance of a student nailing his incredibly hot teacher.


The conflict in this story comes from Dench having seen this affair with her own eyes and instead of telling someone in charge she holds it over Blanchett's head. The other conflict is that Blanchett has 2 kids, a pretty 16 yr old girl and a son who has Downs syndrome and with Dench always invading their privacy, the family starts to resent Dench and Blanchett. There is a scene that captures that frustration in a way that not only gets the family annoyed, but it makes the audience annoyed for them. When Dench feels betrayed because Blanchett cannot seem to end her affair, she drops a hint to a fellow teacher and soon the entire sordid affair unravels. Being the Internet age, the story catches the airwaves and we see what like is like for the teacher arrested for such crimes.


I liked that no one is portrayed as a victim in this and I like that the husband (Bill Nighy) gets some serious scenes and doesn't come off like a typical movie significant other. I love watching Blanchett and Dench work off each other and I love the dialogue. I like that we get a sense that Dench is not really a lesbian, just a disillusioned crazy woman, who hasn't broken any actual laws, so she doesn't come across as truly evil. She is just a desperately lonely old woman. There are no good and bad people in this movie. There is right and there is wrong, and the two main characters do an awful lot of both. However, one of the downsides of that is that the conclusion feels a bit like a non conclusion. The climax starts so powerful and then it just kind of dies. In reality it is the only way it could have ended without getting into the absurd, but even still, I guess apart of me wants to watch Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench fight to the death.