A must see

Mánudagur, 5.3.2007

Common Sense ReviewReviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs A sophisticated look at desire and self-delusion, NOTES ON A SCANDAL combines sly melodrama and sharp wit. Framed by the perspective of history teacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), the movie (which is based on the novel What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller) follows Barbara's evolving infatuation with a new, younger colleague, art teacher Sheba (Cate Blanchett).At first, Barbara delights in what she calls their "mutual ability to see through the quotidian awfulness of things." But Barbara also comes to imagine a romance, which she confesses to her diary and then tries to manipulate in her relationship with Sheba. The film begins by setting up Barbara's limited view, which will become the viewer's as well. "People have always trusted me with their secrets," she says in voice-over, as the scene cuts from her lonely figure on a park bench to her diary page. "But who do I trust with mine? You, only you."As the school year starts, Barbara glowers from a second-floor window, deeming the yard full of students to be "the local pubescent proles, the future lumbers and shop assistants and doubtless the odd terrorist too." Accompanied by Philip Glass' score, Dench is delightfully forbidding here, her demeanor unchanged as the camera picks out Sheba bicycling among the uniformed students, with little sign of the complications that are about to ensue. Barbara initially calls Sheba a "fey person" ("Is she a sphinx or simply stupid?") and disapproves of her family -- which includes much-older husband Richard (a terrific Bill Nighy), a pouty pubescent stepdaughter, and a charming son with Down Syndrome. Yet Barbara is oddly excited when she learns of Sheba's affair with handsome, fit "special needs" student Steven (Andrew Simpson). Though Sheba knows she's doing wrong, she's seduced by the boy's pursuit of her -- and also weary of the demands built into her life at home and at school. As she tells Barbara, she feels entitled to do a little wrong, because she's always done right. (That said, she confesses that Richard left his previous wife for her.)

Sheba is so self-absorbed that she doesn't notice Barbara's needs until the older woman demands not only that Sheba give up the boy, but also, eventually, her family. Barbara's own observations are both prickly and entertaining; they reveal her own inclinations even when she thinks she's maintaining her distance (on meeting Richard, she tells herself, so very dryly, "A rogue image swam through me: Hubby's pruny old mouth pursed at Sheba's breast").

The film's great trick is that no matter how badly Barbara behaves -- and she does connive with some venom -- she remains "sympathetic" in the sense that she's utterly compelling (a function of Dench's strong performance). She's also strangely endearing and quite blind to herself. The film's finale is both harsh and broadly melodramatic, and so fits Barbara's idea of herself -- deflated perhaps, but never defeated. Frá geðfræðilegu sjónarmiði er þessi mynd mikil snilld...Leikurinn afburðagóður....Myndatakan frábær....Músíkkin afleit

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Athugasemdir

Ég sá úr þessari mynd og langar mikið að sjá hana! Frábærar leikkonur og snarpur tilfinninga þriller! Verst hvað ég er lítil bíóstelpa!

www.zordis.com, 6.3.2007 kl. 22:11

Oh, þú ættir að vita hvað þetta er mikil snilldarmynd. Bæði innihaldið og umgjörðin. Lekur Judi Dench er með því betra sem maður hefur séð. Þetta er mynd um einmanaleika og hvert slík kennd getur leitt mann. Mælimeð!

Guðný Anna Arnþórsdóttir, 6.3.2007 kl. 22:20

Vonandi er hægt að leigja hana á þessari guðsvoluðu vídeoleigu hér í bæ sem er aldrei með neitt nema mainstream rusl til leigu og engan metnað til að gera betur. ´Forvitnileg mynd sem mig langar mikið að sjá.

Katrín Snæhólm Baldursdóttir, 7.3.2007 kl. 11:31