Notes on a Scandal

Saw Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett in Notes on a Scandal. A schoolteacher has an affair with a student, and is then blackmailed by a dangerous old spinster who’s developed obsessions with younger women before. It really is Dench’s film, and her performance is magnificent, so chilling in its believability. All else – Blanchett’s solid performance as a spoilt ‘bourgeois bohemian’, the grimy sexiness of the taboo relationship, Bill Nighy going a little too over-the-top, is just background noise, but that’s what carries the film and makes it really rather enjoyable. A hypnotically beautiful portrait of a serpent. Philip Glass puts in a nice score, too, with uncharacteristic bombast. Recommended.