Notes on a Scandal

Judi Dench is a shrewd, coldly scheming veteran teacher in an urban public school and Cate Blanchett the sweetly unprepared art teacher with high ideals and little restraint in the acerbic drama adapted by merciless playwright Patrick Marber from Zoë Heller's novel. MSNBC critic John Hartl writes: "The movie is one of the guilty pleasures of the season -- it's essentially an old-fashioned horror film, designed for audiences who prefer simple menace to buckets of blood -- and it allows Dench and Cate Blanchett plenty of scenery to chew." When Blanchett's sunny but dizzy art teacher gets it off with a 15-year-old student, she becomes easy prey for the withering wiles of Dench's malevolence. "The director, Richard Eyre (who guided Dench through "Iris"), has a tough time steering the rest of the picture in a credible direction," writes Hartl. "At one point, he seems to have thrown up his hands and let the actors go so over the top that they can never find their way back." Both actresses earned Academy Award nominations for their work, as did Marber and composer Philip Glass, and Bill Nighy provides marvelous support as Blanchett's older husband.