PLOT: A beautiful young art teacher puts her career and marriage at risk by a seedy affair with a student. An older colleague becomes entangled in the web of deceit.
Inspired by life cases but crafted into fiction in the Zoe Heller novel, Notes On A Scandal is a complex morality tale.
Now, as a film, Notes is also a brilliantly acted drama that will generate an Oscar nomination for Dame Judi Dench as best actress, and perhaps for Cate Blanchett as best supporting actress (she won that category already in the Toronto Film Critics Association Awards).
The movie does not open in theatres until Christmas Day.
What intrigues about the film version of Notes is that its preoccupations as a morality tale are not just the obvious ones. That was the danger -- that it would be oversimplified, reduced in scope and focused only on the sexual predation -- when it was transposed from the written page.
But that did not happen, thankfully. Patrick Marber's sophisticated adaptation of Heller's novel gave director Richard Eyre a strong foundation. And Eyre's clean, spare direction allowed the key cast members to excel, in particular Dench and Blanchett.
Dench is the narrator and key driving force in the story. Narrations can be a lazy director's way out when storytelling goes bad. Not in this case. You sense that Dench is not a reliable source of information, so there is tension. She is colouring our perspective on other characters.
As she puts her precise, chilling entries into her diary -- and reads the passages to us -- Dench introduces us to her high school in England, particularly to the mysterious new character, a young teacher (Blanchett) with alabaster skin tones and the hint of an agile intellect beneath the beauty.
The story progresses to the scandal of the title. Despite being married (to Bill Nighy, Davy Jones in Dead Man's Locker), despite being a mother in challenging circumstances (her son has Down's Syndrome), Blanchett enters into a sexual affair with a 15-year-old student (Andrew Simpson).
Feral, magnetic and hormonally supercharged, this kid pushes all of Blanchett's buttons that her husband has failed to touch in recent years.
But, when the possessive, controlling Dench discovers what is going on, a new level of intrigue begins. The two women become collaborators in maintaining secrecy.
In addition to positioning us morally on the affair -- it is clear that Blanchett's character is irresponsible and criminal -- the film takes us on an even darker journey.
Dench, unlike her role as M in the 007 franchise, is drained of warmth and human kindness. She is as much or more of a monster than Blanchett. And that is fascinating.
Blanchett captures the right level of capriciousness that her character must have to take the risks she does. It is believable, even when the affair gets sordid.
Nighy is mostly good, except in one overwrought scene when he explodes in rage.
With such great performances at its heart, and with such a refined staging and presentation by director Eyre and his crew, it is a shame that the filmmakers chose Philip Glass to do the score. While he is often brilliant (Koyaniskotsi and The Hours, among others), this time his familiar, repetitive electronic layerings are too much.
Glass' music tells us precisely how to feel every second of the film. Given what Dench and Blanchett show in their faces, in their body language and in their dialogue, that is unncessary.
The rest of the film is just right.
BOTTOM LINE: Not perfect and meant to be disturbing for its take on complex moral issues, this British film is so well acted that it is Oscar-bound.
(This film is rated 14A)
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