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FOX SEARCHLIGHT |
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NOTES ON A SCANDAL
Slightly addled, slightly unhappy, a schoolteacher named Sheba (Cate Blanchett) enters upon a liaison with a teenage student. He's really the aggressor, not that that would make any difference to the press, should the story get out. But director Richard Eyre and writer Patrick Marbur (adapting a novel by Zoe Heller) aren't working for the tabloids. They have their eyes on something more emotionally potent and to that end introduce an older woman named Barbara (Judi Dench) into the equation. She's the school battleaxe, with lesbian designs on the younger woman—and is not above practicing a little blackmail to achieve her ends. Blanchett is terrific in her vulnerability, but Dench is something else again. Rarely does the screen offer such relentless and riveting ferocity in a performance, and she drives this story well beyond its humble, slightly trashy origins.
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