Upon revealing the truth of Sheba who has an affair with one of her students, Barbara Covert, an aged teacher, who is about to retire, falls for the young teacher of art.
Richard Eyre's direction merely plays up the melodramatic aspects of Zoë Heller's novel, screenwriter Patrick Marber's acidic dialogue occasionally slips into the overwritten, and the rest of the cast gamely chews table scraps.
The strength of the writing, and therefore the directing, is that it sees the scandal as a minor point in a human experience that is naturally corrupt, and cares more about how those on the inside choose to deal with their realities.
Eleanor Ringel Gillespie
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
January 11, 2007
While Glenn Close played her Fatal Attraction character's 'I will not be ignored' psycho-obsession out front and out loud, Dench does it as subtext, making it all the more insidious, frightening ... and fascinating.
Fernando F. Croce
CinePassion
August 28, 2009
Stages the story with a tastefulness both ponderous and dishonest
This compact, fierce and frightening domestic thriller is the most violent film in many a day. The rage is in the angry words, the deepest thoughts of its 'heroine,' and the fear about what might come from those words is palpable.
Brandon Fibbs
BrandonFibbs.com
February 28, 2008
Notes on a Scandal is melodrama at its best -- a nasty, wickedly good, over-the-top story with school teachers standing in where vampires usually prowl.
