Notes on a Scandal (2006)

Notes on a Scandal arrives from 2006, which in the taxonomy of contemporary cultural markers is roughly the Jurassic. Richard Eyre directs a chamber piece about Barbara Covett, a history teacher nearing retirement with a diary and a grudge, and Sheba Hart, the new art teacher who is sleeping with a fifteen-year-old pupil while her older husband waits at home. Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett circle each other for ninety minutes with the patience of two predators who have read the same book. The film is cold, precise, and entirely uninterested in instructing its audience.

The single strand of modern sensibility here is Barbara's desire, which is unmistakably romantic and unmistakably denied. Her sister asks pointed questions at Christmas. Barbara stiffens. Later she says she needs more than a friend. The film treats this as a symptom of loneliness curdling into predation, not as an identity to be celebrated, which is why it registers as a theme without registering as advocacy. Two formidable women at the center of a story, meanwhile, does not a thesis make; the subject is obsession, blackmail, and self-deception, and the film knows it.

Elsewhere the cupboard is bare. There is no racial consciousness, no climate anxiety, no body politics, no reimagining of history. A special-needs son provides domestic strain and nothing more. The Washington Post read the whole thing as anthropology of the British liberal middle class, which is fair, though anthropology is not a manifesto. And crucially, the film refuses to sermonize. It hands us a teacher who commits a crime and a colleague who weaponizes it, and it refuses to tell us which one to despise. The final scene, with Barbara selecting her next young woman from a newspaper, suggests the lesson will not be learned. Some films lecture. This one just watches.