Notes On A Scandal

[+ Lucky]

Saw this flic in LA on Friday and was quite impressed. Judi Dench plays a closeted lesbian schoolteacher who gets hot for new art teacher Cate Blanchett. Yet Blanchett is bored in her marriage to an older man and her two difficult children, so she has an affair with a fifteen year old student, played by Irish actor Andrew Simpson. Simpson turns 18 on January 1, so I will wait until then to comment on his looks. His acting was superb as he played the seductive young teen quite believably.

 

A friend who saw the movie with me walked out because the creepiness of the subject matter bothered him as well as the uncompromisingly hateful character played by Dench. He thought that with no explanation as to how she became such a horrible person that the movie was homophobic to portray her as a lesbian predator.

 

I thought the movie was excellent in its portrayals of evil both for the predator and the seductor/victims. The jarring results of the deception involved and its damage to the families was compelling. You won't walk away happy, but there will be a (perverse) satisfaction at such vivid and creepy portrayals. All in all, good film-making!

[+ Lucky]

Okay, it's January 1st, Andrew is 18. He looks really cute, but has a skinny body and easily passes for fifteen. Thus, the sex scenes with Cate Blanchett seem rather bizarre as he is just too young looking!

[jimbeaux]

Excellent film with two stellar performances (well three actually if you count Bill Nighy as Blanchett's husband). It'd be hard to praise one performance over the other - both were chillingly superb. Interesting someone would find the film homophobic - not me but what do I know???;( :*

[catnip]

I saw the film this past weekend at a nearly full theater (4:45 p.m.) in Chelsea. It seems word is out that this is a juicy, over-the-top film, kind of in the "Mommy Dearest" mode, but definiteley slicker and more serious. Still, certain lines got big laughs, like Dench to Blanchett: "The [two] years will FLY by!"

 

And it's not homophobic IMO - it's the closet and her dishonesty that does Dench in, not her lesbianism (I like that word...).