don't miss NOTES ON A SCANDAL

I was dismayed by the snarly NY Times review of this Dench-Blanchette film. This is the most engaging, wickedly adult movie out there -- one that can make you gasp, laugh, and wait expectedly for the next turn. Dench's Barbara is a unique screen creation, a brilliant, viperous serial complusive who mines a crisis in the life of a romantic fixation for her own needs. Anyone bothered by semi-PC issues of her closeted state is missing the bigger point of the character and the film. The heart has reason reason knows not of, and Dench makes her palpably real and compelling. The Marber dialogue is delicious by any standard, vivid and quotable. And there are at least three confrontations in this film that might be classics of a type. If you want an alternative to apocolypic destruction and violence, penguins, or even those coveted Detroit girl singers, check this one out.

---

Updated On: 12/27/06 at 10:47 AM

I'm so excited about this movie.

I cannot wait to see this film. Judi and Cate together is better than sex.

*************SPOILERS************************
I found the movie really entertaining and provocative, but the score and the very last scene were definite minuses for me. My comment to the friend who accompanied me to this afternoon's screening was that Phillip Glass just did not seem to be on the same page with the rest of the creative team as far as the film's politics are concerned. His sweeping "hysteria music" when Barbara explains to Sheba that she and a girlhood friend used to rub each other's forearms as a friendly gesture of sorts was just over the top in the worst way. And not even just then - there were multiple other occasions when the score seemed to peg lesbianism as a serious menace, whereas the screenplay (particularly by introducing Barbara's sister and some of her holiday lunchmates as friends who believe Barbara to be a closeted lesbian and would clearly be supportive of her if she came out) mostly indicated that lesbianism was not an evil. Rather, Barbara's sense that she had to be calculating and destructive in order to secure long-term companionship of any kind was the real danger. On the last scene: Well, why feature Barbara courting yet another mousey blonde white woman with lies? Is the implication that she preys on that particular demographic? If so, why? Wouldn't this implication of appearance-based "hunting" go against the film's otherwise complex thesis that Barbara experiences lust, hatred, amusement and sympathy all at once for those she seeks as "friends locked forever in [her] debt" .... that she was drawn to Sheba for her ridiculous behavior and not because she was a slim blonde woman with peachy skin .... that she despises the woman she most desires?

Having read the novel, I was also surprised to see some of the funnier passages reinvented as high drama for the screen - esp. the one where one character solicits another for her opinion as to whether a third character is attracted to him. I was still amused and laughed aloud but I didn't get the impression that most of the other people in the theater saw the humor, or that the film really asked them to see it. I often recommend the novel to people looking for a good dark comedy; the film, I think, will be more appealing to people who appreciate when a piece of art is unsettling and like to explore why afterward.

All of that said, I did like the film very much and will probably see it another time - maybe two more times - in the theater. The performances are not overhyped; if anything, "the little boy" deserves a nod or two. I will write more later - I hate to give the impression that I was generally offended by the film and didn't like it when really, I agree with the reviewers who have said that they enjoyed getting dirty 'vicariously' through this film. This could be my life-long affection for sordid material like Albee's "The Goat or Who Is Sylvia?" or something more complicated that I'll only understand through multiple screenings. Believe it or not, if I had to rank favorite films of the year, this would easily make top 5 - maybe even a three-way tie at #1 with Dreamgirls and Little Children.

P.S. On a lighter note.... how sweet were those calculated slaps Sheba gave Barbara across each cheek just before she tries decking her with the diary?
*************END SPOILERS**************************

I skipped the last two spoiler posts, but after reading your recommendation, Auggie, I will go see this. Although I adore both Blanchette and Dench, the trailer made this look like a lesbian version of Fatal Attraction. Just a tad too melodramatic. But if you say so, I am there.

---

I'm so flattered, Ms. Sueleen, that you'd take my recommendation to heart. Yes, yes, to be sure it can sound like a lesbian FATAL ATTRACTION. But the character Dench plays is not pitiful or pitiable, not a chronic "loser." If anything, she has a kind of x-ray vision about the world, certainly school and its pretentions and paralysis that everyone else lacks. Yes, she's lonely, and no, she's not out and proud. But she's a survivor of a sort -- and who are we to judge her eccentric MO? She's miles from the Glenn Close psycho-stalker. She is self-deluding only in ways we all are at times. Or so I believe. I suppose I related to her more than I care to admit.

---

Great film--- definitely worth the watch, Judi Dench as a crazy lesbian is simply brilliant.

Yes Miss.

***SPOILERS***

Thanks for your response, Auggie. Obviously I'm with you on the value of a private screening for this particular film. There are many ways to appreciate the film but I gather most people will just read it as a psychological thriller in the vein of A Perfect Murder, whereas others - perhaps noting the similarities between Barbara cutting up her face while pawing through that dirt and Joan/Faye doing the same while cutting up a rose garden, or knowing that Marber himself is amused enough by the story that he'd like to see it turned into a comic opera - will see it as a drama/dark comedy/thriller hybrid.

Did you read the novel, by any chance? I was surprised that the film didn't consider [the novel] Barbara's suggestion that in addition to gaining Sheba as a lifelong companion by permitting the scandal, she could rise from her lower middle-class ranks by publishing the "notes." Of course it was quite funny enough just to hear Barbara say [in the film] that the months of commanding the paparazzi's attention were "the most entertaining" in her life. For most of tonight's screening, I wanted to pose with my arm around Barbara in a photograph as a way of expressing my support for her sense of "opportunity."

So funny, that schoolteacher. Believe me I'm not done talking about NOAS.

****END SPOILERS****

"I always have problems with the gay predator being depicted on screen -- especially when combined with coercive acts."

Why? It's not like it doesn't ever happen.

The problem is this: when is the last time you saw a movie where the gay person hit on a straight person and the straight person said, "I'm not gay" and that was enough to make the gay person back off?

The uniform way gay people are portrayed in the media isn't something to ignore -- representation is THE politic of social change.

---

Now, I'm not saying onne couldn't argue that the film could be read in a different way, but the question of representation has to do with predicting how others will read the text (in this case, Notes on a Scandal). In this case, I think it would be wrong to say people won't fit Dench's character into the category of the gay people who can't keep their hands off. Does Dench have more complex issues? Surely. However, I predict most will read this role as a gay role, and not as a human role. Therefore, the representation of the gay body comes into play. Thus, the issues of representation of culture abound. The issue isn't whether we know people like this, but how normalized the bahavior is portaryed as. In this film, her "gay-ness" is not normalized, it is secret, it is hidden, and it is perverse. Yes, I know people like that...but this story gets written onto gay bodies. And, with so few stories of liberation to be told, this story becomes awfully tired and problematic.

As far as will and Grace goes, I think that show normalizes Jack -- which makes the role perfectly acceptable to me -- he is interacted with as human -- like you and me, not an anti-social predator-freak like Dench.

---

Updated On: 12/29/06 at 04:26 PM

In the novel, Barbara loftily dismisses the possibility of her and Sheba being engaged in "some sort of sapphic love affair" when her fellow teachers suggest it. Her obsession with Sheba is much more murky and creepy and controlling than a mere sexual attraction--it's closer to the manipulative gamesmanship of the two women in Sartre's masterpiece NO EXIT. Anyone who writes it off as "lesbian stereotype" is oversimplifying.

Personally, I prefer such characters, who have recognizable psychological truth in them, to the Hollywood happy/positive "role models" which tedious people are always clamoring for--like Greg Kinnear's sexless plaster saint in AS GOOD AS IT GETS.

---

If gay people were being represented as more than 2 dimensions, I wouldn't have a problem with this film (in the same way I don't have a problem with The Sopranos because there are other Italian bodies being represented on film).

So, half the problem I have is the lack of other films. And the other half of the problem is the way this film continues the tendency to sell tickets by marginalizing gay people further.

I am sure the intention of the filmmakers and the actors is to illuminate the human condition, I just fear that this film will be used to justify marginalization instead of liberation. Of course, as is always the case with texts, the choice is up to the one who interprets.

---