“You must inform me of everything,” purrs Barbara Covett, the Dickensian-named, dried-out lioness of a schoolteacher played remarkably by Judi Dench in “Notes on a Scandal.”
To deliver this line, she rubs her catty fur up against the equally appropriately named temptress Sheba Hart, portrayed by Cate Blanchett. Best pay attention to Miss Covett: She will be informed, one way or another, whether you’re the one to tell her or not.
And pay even closer attention to how she is not informing you: The secrets Miss Covett keeps to herself are claws sharpened for decades, as dangerous to the feline who wields them as they are to her prey.
You’ll have to excuse the delicious sense of paranoia that sets in while recounting the evil charms of “Notes on a Scandal.” A perfectly executed movie, whose working motto is keep your friends close and your enemies closer, can make the viewer look over the shoulder for sharp objects. Or unlocked diaries.
Blanchett and Dench prowl around each other in an adaptation of a headline-ripping novel by Zoe Heller. Dench’s Barbara Covett is a self-described “battle ax” of a teacher at a rowdy British public school, merely punching the clock before going home to her cat and tea cozy. Lest you are briefly delusioned that Miss Covett is a sentimental Mrs. Chips, she archly defends her students’ history exam scores as “below the national average, and just above catastrophe.”
Teaching, she says, is “crowd control. We’re a branch of the social services.”
In prances Sheba Hart, with Blanchett a blond and looking foxier than ever. She’s spent 10 years at home taking care of her son with Down Syndrome, and has returned to the world to do some good. Who she seems to do the most good to is the 15-year-old boys, particularly an artistic storyteller named Steven Connolly (Andrew Simp son).
In a sequence as deftly edited as a good chase film by director Richard Eyre, the old battle ax discovers an ill-advised, and probably illegal, tryst between Sheba and the boy. And suddenly we realize Covett/Dench has developed a huge crush of her own on Sheba. Jealousy disguised by friendship is bound to fester.
Covett confronts Sheba, hinting that under normal circumstances, it would be her duty to go to authorities about the sexual liaison. Then Covett has a change of, well, Hart, telling her younger protégé that if she keeps her informed of everything that happens between her and the boy, she will not expose the affair.
“No one can violate our magnificent complicity,” Dench writes in her ubiquitous journal.
This intensity lurking just behind the ordinary recalls the novels of Patricia Highsmith and the plot of her novel-turned-Minghella masterpiece, “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” For another male-dominated turn on the same ideas of jealousy and corrosive secrets, see “Othello.” Good writers like Heller and screenwriter Patrick Marber (“Closer”) can go deeper than tabloid headlines for their best material.
Carefully honed writing marries with impeccable British diction for observations like these, from Dench, when her deceptions and betrayals begin to unravel:
“Judas had the grace to hang himself, but only according to Matthew, the most sentimental of the Gospels.”
The biblical references are no accident, as anyone can attest who has been a spectator to crucifixion-by-tabloid. There is no scandal without disclosure, and the title of the movie lets us know these secrets are not likely to stay buried in the cat box.
The writers and the actors have just enough sympathy for their characters to keep “Notes” from deteriorating into a comedy of horrible manners. A teary Sheba mentions her father’s favorite phrase from the British subway system, “Mind the gap.” For her family, the phrase meant noticing the depressing difference between “the life you dream, and the life you get.”
Covett’s solitary, pre-Sheba existence is given fair play as well. Sheba knows nothing of “lonely,” Covett hisses, or “the idea of planning one’s whole weekend around a visit to the laundrette.”
Bill Nighy contributes his usual magnetic presence in pitch-perfect supporting role as Sheba’s husband. “I’m not saying I was so (expletive) fabulous,” he shouts at his wayward wife. “But I was here.”
These touches keep Marber’s script from repeating the polished hate-fest of “Closer.”
“Notes” is a school for scandal, a lesson to filmmakers, and a treat for us all.
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-954-1686 or at mbooth@denverpost.com; try the Screen Team blog at denverpostbloghouse.com.
“Notes on a Scandal” | **** RATING
R for language, sexuality, mature subject matter|1 hour, 40 minutes| DRAMA|Directed by Richard Eyre; written by Patrick Marber, based on the book by Zoe Heller; starring Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench, Bill Nighy and Andrew Simpson|Opens today at area theaters.
