Title: Notes on a Scandal
Description: Coral Browne mention
Description: Coral Browne mention
mjansen - December 28, 2006 09:11 PM (GMT)
Delicious ‘Scandal’: Judi Dench’s ‘Notes’-perfect turn steals the film
By James Verniere/ Film Critic
Boston Herald Film Critic
Hot For Teacher: Cate Blanchett, left, plays an art teacher who is coveted by a malevolent history teacher played by Judi Dench in ‘Notes on a Scandal.’
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - Updated: 07:15 AM EST
Movie Rating: ® | Critic: A-
Taking a cue from recent teacher-student sex scandals, “Notes on a Scandal” showcases a bravura performance by Judi Dench as a British secondary school teacher with a tongue like a carving knife and a penchant for younger, female colleagues.
Dench’s Barbara Covett is the dragon lady of the aptly named St. George’s School in Islington, right up there with Coral Browne’s Mercy Croft in “The Killing of Sister George” (1968).
At first sight, Barbara - uhh - covets her willowy new colleague Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a privileged wife, mother and art teacher who has not lost the blush of youth at 37.
When Barbara spies queenly Sheba in the act of sex with a good-looking, 15-year-old male student, she’s horrified and jealous. But it occurs to her that she can use her knowledge to bend Sheba to her will.
A variation on a theme of Lillian Hellman’s landmark stage play “The Children’s Hour,” “Notes on a Scandal” is based on a novel by Zoe Heller adapted by playwright-screenwriter Patrick Marber (“Asylum,” “Closer”) and directed by Richard Eyre (“Iris,” “Stage Beauty”). Thanks to Dench’s fearlessness and genius, the film features the most fiendishly poisonous and hilariously nasty villainess in recent arthouse history.
Barbara is a character for the ages and whenever she is center stage “Notes on a Scandal” is riveting. Her take-no-prisoners voice-overs alone are worth the price of admission. In opening scenes, Barbara acidly describes teaching in today’s world as “crowd control” and her new students as “future shoplifters and terrorists.” She is not quite sure at first if Sheba’s art teacher is “a sphinx or stupid.”
Barbara, who teaches history, describes herself as a “battle ax.” She is a misanthrope, but she is also lonely, and her weekends are an “arctic wilderness.” When Sheba invites her to Sunday lunch, Barbara shows up overdressed and her evil eye contaminates everything upon which it alights. She sees Sheba’s older husband (Bill Nighy) as a “crumbling patriarch” and despises the couple’s children and “bourgeois bohemia.”
Compared with Her Satanic Majesty Barbara, Sheba and her affair are unavoidably rather tawdry and dull. Blanchett is fine as Sheba, although Sheba’s behavior makes it difficult to sympathize with her, and the film stumbles weakly to its predictable conclusion. But it boasts a terrific kicker. If this were “Jaws,” we’d demand a sequel.
(“Notes on a Scandal” contains profanity and sexual content.)
At AMC Loews Boston Common and suburban theaters.
Boston Herald
By James Verniere/ Film Critic
Boston Herald Film Critic
Hot For Teacher: Cate Blanchett, left, plays an art teacher who is coveted by a malevolent history teacher played by Judi Dench in ‘Notes on a Scandal.’
Wednesday, December 27, 2006 - Updated: 07:15 AM EST
Movie Rating: ® | Critic: A-
Taking a cue from recent teacher-student sex scandals, “Notes on a Scandal” showcases a bravura performance by Judi Dench as a British secondary school teacher with a tongue like a carving knife and a penchant for younger, female colleagues.
Dench’s Barbara Covett is the dragon lady of the aptly named St. George’s School in Islington, right up there with Coral Browne’s Mercy Croft in “The Killing of Sister George” (1968).
At first sight, Barbara - uhh - covets her willowy new colleague Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a privileged wife, mother and art teacher who has not lost the blush of youth at 37.
When Barbara spies queenly Sheba in the act of sex with a good-looking, 15-year-old male student, she’s horrified and jealous. But it occurs to her that she can use her knowledge to bend Sheba to her will.
A variation on a theme of Lillian Hellman’s landmark stage play “The Children’s Hour,” “Notes on a Scandal” is based on a novel by Zoe Heller adapted by playwright-screenwriter Patrick Marber (“Asylum,” “Closer”) and directed by Richard Eyre (“Iris,” “Stage Beauty”). Thanks to Dench’s fearlessness and genius, the film features the most fiendishly poisonous and hilariously nasty villainess in recent arthouse history.
Barbara is a character for the ages and whenever she is center stage “Notes on a Scandal” is riveting. Her take-no-prisoners voice-overs alone are worth the price of admission. In opening scenes, Barbara acidly describes teaching in today’s world as “crowd control” and her new students as “future shoplifters and terrorists.” She is not quite sure at first if Sheba’s art teacher is “a sphinx or stupid.”
Barbara, who teaches history, describes herself as a “battle ax.” She is a misanthrope, but she is also lonely, and her weekends are an “arctic wilderness.” When Sheba invites her to Sunday lunch, Barbara shows up overdressed and her evil eye contaminates everything upon which it alights. She sees Sheba’s older husband (Bill Nighy) as a “crumbling patriarch” and despises the couple’s children and “bourgeois bohemia.”
Compared with Her Satanic Majesty Barbara, Sheba and her affair are unavoidably rather tawdry and dull. Blanchett is fine as Sheba, although Sheba’s behavior makes it difficult to sympathize with her, and the film stumbles weakly to its predictable conclusion. But it boasts a terrific kicker. If this were “Jaws,” we’d demand a sequel.
(“Notes on a Scandal” contains profanity and sexual content.)
At AMC Loews Boston Common and suburban theaters.
Boston Herald