TRH Movie - Notes On A Scandal

It's very rare that I like any movie better than the book, and considering I really enjoyed Zoë Heller's novel, to say I was surprised by the film is kind of an understatement.

Notes on a Scandal follows the story of an upper-class British woman, Sheba Hart (Blanchett), who has an affair with one of her students, 15-year-old Steven Connolly (played by newcomer Andrew Simpson), and must rely upon her much older friend Barbara (Dench) once the affair comes out and her life falls apart.

Only the film is from Barbara's perspective, it follows her life, her narrative and tells the story from her point of view. This means we hear of Sheba's affair second hand, through her retelling of it to Barbara, once the elder woman discovers the lovers in the classroom, ahem, in a precarious position. And Barbara, or "Bar" as Sheba calls her, is nuts, driven to the point of obsession by utter loneliness and maybe a bit of a predilection for mistaking friendship for the intimacy normally found between two adults in a romantic relationship.

But you say, it stars Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, of course it's going to be good. And yes, Dench's Barbara is totally creepy and quite obsessed, and Blanchett's Sheba is one part flighty, one part entitled and always beautiful, which is perfect casting. However, why the film succeeds has more to do with how it manipulates narrative exposition to its advantage. In bookish films where the "book" aspects don't usually work (ahem, Possession, I'm looking at you), it totally ruins the film for me. Here, however, Barbara's obsessive note-taking and journal writing underpins her character so perfectly that it actually makes the movie. And it doesn't hurt that the script is bloody brilliant.

There are a couple of cringeworthy moments, and Bill Nighy as Sheba's husband is stupendous casting (LOVE him), and on the whole, I liked this movie far, far better than I thought I would.