Notes on a Scandal
Directed by Richard Eyre
Opens in theaters Jan. 5

Review by LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

Down at the bottom of the silt and sludge, the deposit of 10 months of bloated-budget mediocrity, the true film lover sifts and shakes the pan, mining hope-against-hope for a couple of just-in-time-for-the-Oscars gems. That glint from under the muck is Notes on a Scandal.

Notes provides tangible evidence that between vapid celebrity vehicles and art-house obscurities, well-crafted suspense can still carry the day, if not the box office.

Based on the 2003 critically acclaimed Zoe Heller novel, the project distinguished itself before the first frame was shot. Directing the redoubtable combination of Cate Blanchett and Judy Dench is Richard Eyre, under whose helmsmanship Dench garnered an Oscar nomination for Iris in 2001. Add writer Patrick Marber, who, as he demonstrated in Closer, is an astute observer of bourgeois libidinousness, and we’ve got a lunch-pail collusion: craftspeople known for putting their shoulders to the wheel.

Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) takes a job as an art teacher at St. George, a London parochial school. Having married perhaps a bit too young to a man a generation her senior, she possesses a light and flirty air. Home-bound for a decade raising a child with Down’s syndrome, the currency of her sex appeal has gone unappraised for some time, and despite Sheba’s best efforts at restraint, there’s a part of her that needs reassurance.

The story is told through the “notes” and perspective of history teacher Barbara Covett (Judy Dench), who serves as the school’s self-appointed matron, never having ascended officially above her appointed classroom station. Austere and sardonic, she’s obsessive in her scrutiny, weighing and measuring all with the misfortune to come within her purview. A late middle-age spinster, she allows Sheba to befriend her, belying the true depth of the older woman’s need for companionship. When Barbara becomes aware of Sheba’s indiscretion with one of the male students, the knowledge becomes a tool for perfidy and manipulation.

As with Closer, Marber’s script adaptation is made even more effective in its London locale, where the breach of propriety remains a dramatic event. (What’s illicit in LA?) And even as his characters anguish through their infidelities, they never lose their rapier wit and stylish repartee.

Eyre, a former director at England’s Royal National Theatre and a Shakespearean veteran, is exacting, giving human folly no larger measure than its due. Taking story elements with all the potential for something too pulpy, too prurient, too-out-of-the-headlines, he keeps them from going over the top.

Perhaps in the next decade Notes on a Scandal will be readapted in true Hollywood style, with the aforementioned pitfalls made manifest, resulting in overwhelming box office receipts. The reviewers will revisit the 2006 version and lament about how movies used to be made — with writers who write, directors who direct, and actors who actually act.