Notes On A Scandal - Review

I saw a preview screening of Notes On A Scandal last night. You should definitely see it; beside being incredibly fun to watch (and Judi Dench being incredible), it's one that'll stick with you for days if you're as interested as I am in how sexual identity has been represented through the years in film.

Below is what I just wrote to someone asking me for my opinion on the film; these are very early thoughts on the film, and I do feel this is one in which my opinion will be all over the map for as I think it through, and I will, in the coming days. I'm just sort of spent after writing the below, with regards to thinking through the film, and can't rewrite what I'm thinking again, hence the cut-and-paste job. (I get why Nathaniel's been so hesitant to offer up a grade now.)

Be forewarned, there are spoilers below (though the trailer gives away 97% of the film anyway).

"I enjoyed it a lot; it's tremendously entertaining. Judi Dench was fantastic, as was Cate Blanchett. It's... definitely a fascinating film, one that should and probably will be studied in film classes on Gender and Sexual Identity type politics. It made me deeply uncomfortable at times, which I applaud it for, but at the same time I feel like it's gonna take several viewings to really work out what it's accomplishing. It's... well, honestly it's got me a bit confounded for words.

Because I did enjoy the film a lot, but at the same time, I'm not completely sure... well, I'm not really sure what it accomplished. It did throw all the old "gay as sexual predator" stories onto their ear, but at the same time, it used a lot of those tropes to get a reaction from the audience. Just like with wanting us to be horrified at Blanchett's pedophiliac liason, but then kind of going out of its way to sexualize the 15-year-old boy. There was a lot of "having your cake and eating it too" going on, I guess, that was adding to the film making me so uncomfortable.

But only uncomfortable when I got into thinking about the film afterwards; while the film's rolling it was highly enjoyable. Very funny, and smart, and melodramatic in the best of ways. It definitely knows what its doing, and does so very well. I'd definitely recommend people to see it, to make up their own minds about what it does and doesn't accomplish. I'm probably going to be mulling it over for days.

So I'd say my favorite thing about the film would definitely be Judi Dench; she's just marvelous in it, and it may be my favorite performance that I've seen of hers. It's a character I will not soon forget. Least favorite thing... like I said, the film's walking a thin line, by trying to play up the thriller aspects of the sinister lesbian spinster as a predator and, at the same time, undermine those old familiar ideas, and while I think it works for the most part (a huge part of which is due to Dench's fantastic work) there are moments where I feel the film is pushing its luck. The ending, for one, reminded me of the ending of The Silence of the Lambs, where we see Hannibal Lector roaming the streets free, poised to attack anew; my straight female friend I was watching the film with said she thought she was going to have nightmares about Judi Dench, which did sort of trouble me.

I do appreciate that the film's big fight scene towards the end between Blanchett and Dench ended without one killing the other, that it ended just sad and kind of pathetically, like both of the characters were, because if the film had felt the need to kill the lesbian it would've crossed the line it was treading so smartly on. And that the film's representation of heterosexualty, in Blanchett, is so marvelously, well, fucked up, and perverse in her own right, certainly levels the playing field. I just hope that more people's reactions in leaving the film, as mine was, will be to have found the Blanchett character the scarier of the two women (the scene where she's smeared with make-up and runs into the crowd of photographers works best, in that right).

So I did find the film completely engaging and, obviously, it fascinated me. For better and for worse, the thing pushes buttons and gets a response out of you, that's for sure."

.