"Notes on a Scandal" (2006) - Movie Review

Stretching the moral boundaries especially in the manners of sexual advancement is a constant debate and a matter of interest for novelists and film makers. And “Notes on a Scandal” plays it with such a caution and it gets away with it nicely by the performance of three main performers, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy. The film is based upon the book of the same name by Zoë Heller. It ends inconclusively which pushes us away either to come to a conclusion or to respect it as a short story of unsorted moral quests and actions. And that’s exactly director Richard Eyre would have intended.

Every one in their school days would have seen some one like Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), a hard crack with discipline and authority as the weapon over disoriented teenagers. And in a public school, the job comes with the territory of being like that. She has the hard earned respect out of fear and not of her skill in teaching the subject. It all comes to control. Never have been in control with her life, Barbara is the figure of fear and hence she can submit a single paragraph about her department and improvements to her headmaster and come unscathed, rather the other party will be in humiliation and becomes headless in authority. She maintains a journal and summarizes her deep silence which she goes through at various time instances in the school. She is alone, rigid, has iron curtain for her face and she tightens her inner desire into penning of notes with her own fantasy assumptions.

Her eyes lie on the new blonde, Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) who attracts bees of men with her curling dense sensual hair and a smile of innocence. While she is quite the opposite of Barbara, soon does Sheba lands in the hands of tyrannical presence of Barbara. Barbara aids in sorting out a fight with two boys in Sheba’s art class. One of the boys, Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson) has developed a particular fondness with Sheba. Little does Barbara knows that Sheba willingly has given to her desires to the young boy. Sheba is a young wife for the older Richard (Bill Nighy). A teenage daughter Polly (Juno Temple) and a Down syndrome son Ben (Max Lewis), she is finding this new experience after ten years of loneliness being estranged by her busy family duties is no excuse, but she falls, quite miserably. Barbara while furious about this has now got Sheba by her throat, an opportunity for forming a bond, a forced one. She throws her card with cunning and cleverness, shading under the mode of friendship.

If not for the narration of Barbara, we would have been completely swept off by the gesture and assistance she showers over Sheba. Sure that we would have known about her sexual advancements, but definitely would not have suspected her machinations to make Sheba hers. As I have always showed my dissent towards using kids to the portrayal of intimate scenes at an age unaware of the traumas, the film barely escapes from that using a seventeen year old kid as fifteen. Here is where even I have a shameless moral partialness. But where can we draw the line? How the region of judgment of logic in our brain conflicts and gets defeated by the hormones of desires so easily? Nothing can be explained. “Notes on a Scandal” does scare us on our inner helplessness when desperate situations comes by.

“Little Children” had the same kind of emotional sufferings shadowed by the sexual tint. Watching the character of Barbara is the film. Her belief in a world created by her wherein she has convinced herself not once but twice to have a controlled lovable relationship without the reciprocation of other party. The only thing wherein Barbara and Sheba are same is their inability to talk with some one whom they are approached with care and consideration. Sheba with Richard while the small role of Barbara’s sister who tries to get the feel of this woman who has nothing but fierce negation of some one she does not intend to confide even her slightest honest opinion.

As the film hops on with the convenient performance of able actresses/actors, we are left with ambiguity of the take on this tale. But thinking back, it is a character study and the sexual instincts of clueless personalities. The act of submitting to the sexual deviance which has an obvious end makes us judge Sheba pretty easily. She has her share of insecure loneliness and boredom, and we get to see how miniscule that is when Barbara tells her miserable solitude of untouched sexuality. Burden and emotionally void life cannot be compared but the consequences of making it as an excuse to do the blunder ultimately costs. Sheba pays for her consequences but has Richard to share it, while Barbara lives in her unfulfilled dream world of chasing shadows, alone.