notes on a scandal

this is a genre film — a psychopathological thriller a la patricia highsmith and thomas harris — that, like the best of its kind, comments on the deeper issues of misdirected love and pathologically unmet need (or: what do you do when the things you crave are forbidden?). notes on a scandal is brilliantly written/directed and brilliantly acted by all involved, though i would like to emphasize the amazing performances of cate blanchett and judy dench, who work together beautifully.

barbara (dench) is a no-nonsense high school history teacher who can break up a fight by saying ‘enough’ and get kids to fess up in three minutes flat. she’s also a lesbian so transparently repressed that everyone knows it except herself. sheba (blanchett) is a new, clumsy, and breezily beautiful art teacher who’s decided she needs a break from her quirky but demanding family of four. she’s married to an older, much less attractive than she (not difficult, since she’s glorious) guy (bill nighy), and her progeny are a grumpy teenage daughter and a 12-year-old boy with down syndrome. when sheba shows up in barbara’s school, it takes barbara exactly one second to decide that she’s going to become her ‘best friend.’

barbara narrates the story with a barbed, clipped, and cynical voiceover that is a masterpiece of delivery. the voiceover, which coincides with a journal barbara keeps candidly and meticulously, is meant to give us the true barbara. truth be told, barbara is her true self (bitter, rude, unpleasant) with everyone except sheba. she treats her well-meaning colleagues with undisguised contempt. but she loves sheba. sheba is her new project. so she’s fakingly sweet, maternal, and loving to sheba. she’s, in brief, whatever it takes to win sheba’s ‘friendship.’

sheba and barbara are two women who could have found and liked each other hadn’t it been for the accidents of age, physical beauty, and class. when barbara (pretty quickly) reveals herself a psycho who doesn’t hesitate to wreck another’s life to get her to love her, what you see is a woman driven crazy by loneliness and impossible desire. most great screen psychos have human moments: barbara’s are when, lying in the bath, all wrinkled skin and saggy flesh, she asks in voiceover: “what does she [sheba] know about loneliness? does she know about never having your body touched except when someone bumps into you on the bus?” dench is a genius at portraying simultaneous archness, vulnerability, and perversity: when she observes from her rectangular glasses the school going-ons, trying to figure out how an angle she can work, she’s almost tender.

all the adult characters in this film are after younger flesh. since this is an english and not an american film, this is less perverse and more vulnerable and understandable than it would be here. this film is, among other things, about the tragic fact that bodies age a lot faster than desire. for a change, this is depicted from the point of view of a woman. as sheba’s aging husband (the down-syndrome child comments on his rather than her being past her procreating prime), nighy offers a useful and somewhat bitter reminder that the youthful desires of aging men are much more ‘normal,’ and easily met, than those of aging women.

the love scenes between sheba and the beautiful student she screws by the train tracks are measured and sensitive, not really about these two creatures’ love for each other (that’d be unlikely), but about the boy’s obvious attraction to a beautiful female teacher and sheba’s sad thirst for the touch of someone who’s young, beautiful, and forbidden.

14 thoughts on “notes on a scandal

  1. I liked the film (Dench obviously has the stronger role and gives it her all; I particularly appreciated the way her family members tiptoe around the sexuality of a woman who appears to have no idea who she is), and I appreciated Patrick Marber’s adaptation (and yes, I was waiting for the big disaster of a climatic scene that, remarkably, never arrives). You talk about youth, beauty, and the forbidden . . . what about the camera’s obvious desire for the boy–compact and muscular; as clean and white and smooth as any boy in a Gap Kids ad. When we first see him he takes off his shirt to celebrate a schoolyard football goal and points to Blanchett as if he were giving her a gift (still, exactly for whom is this glimpse of flesh, cinematically speaking, being offered). Later Blanchett runs her hands across his naked body as she goes down on him–Dench peeping through the windows of the art room, mortified by what she is witnessing (not so much the elicit sex but the betrayal). And he’s Irish too, which is always an interesting choice for the Brits.

  2. Caryn James has an interesting article on May/December romance in the movies, focusing particularly on Notes, The History Boys and Venus. It’s worth a look. Click here.

  3. I really liked the film, and I’ll zero in on a reading in our thread on depictions of female rage and aggression. (You all have already nailed the film’s strengths, and I’ll just say again: wow, Dench & Blanchett. They astonish.)

    I’m teaching a class on disability studies right now, and it struck me while watching (and then prompted a long interesting back-and-forth with Kris after): Why is Sheba’s son depicted as having Down’s syndrome? This strikes me as not just happenstance–or, at least, given the great mass of representations of family, to have one “disabled” family member stands out as atypical, as “significant” in the sense of a ribbon pinned on a shirt–we wonder what that detail means, in relation to the rest of the text.

    Gio suggests that the boy’s disability signifies on the husband’s advanced age (as it impinges upon procreation), but while that’s a common conception, it’s a misconception. It certainly connects to other issues of need and parenting … but we’re opening up to some broader readings than the biological. I’m curious if those of you who’ve seen it have any reactions?

    A few things pop to mind:
    –a character with disability is often used as what David Mitchell and Sharon Synder call a “narrative prosthesis”, a handy ‘sign’ that marks the ‘deviance’ or abnormality of some other element. In this case, I think it’d be easy (if a bit ungenerous, as Kris argued with me) to say: the boy Ben’s Down syndrome is in the film solely to mark the unhealthiness of Sheba’s family; his disability is a sign for the impairment underlying the seemingly-happy facade of the family. And/or as an echo/parallel with Barbara’s “impaired” moral/psychological health. When she mocks her students and colleagues and Sheba’s family in the voice-over, we laugh; when she talks about the boy in brutal dismissals, perhaps we are more likely to judge her as bad.

    –Following on the above regarding the significations of disability, to see a mother with a ‘disabled’ child is culturally to see a “good mother”; conversely, for Sheba to ‘wreck’ the family is doubly (if not exponentially) ‘wrong’ when one of her children is “special needs.” (Again, this is ungenerous. But I don’t think it’s far from cultural ideologies of family and disability.)

    –To some degree, Ben also stands for the demands placed upon Sheba: he’s depicted (by her, and by implication in the conversations around her) as particularly burdensome, as needing more of her attention. So in the narrative, Ben illustrates how little time/space Sheba has for her self. This may justify/legitimate–or foster our identification with–her affair.

    –More complexly, Ben’s “abnormal” identity actually echoes–rather than deviating from–all of the characters. Ben wears the wizard hat, is 12 but doesn’t act his age… but then NONE of the characters act their age, and we might see his representation deconstructing notions of age and identity.
    Similarly, his “neediness” is explicitly marked by the text as a burden, but it is the neediness of Barbara, Sheba, Polly (the daughter), and so on that fuels the plot. Ben is actually less demanding on Sheba’s time, as far as we can see–the film points out the complex ‘impairments’ of all the characters, all lacking the ‘healthy’ independence and autonomy considered normal.

    I have these glasses on right now, as a result of the course, so I see the issues everywhere. Sorry for the off-topic ramble.

  4. Less complexly, I found Ben to signify nothing more than how challenging it is to raise a family with a disabled child (and Sheba is a good mother; she is not, however, a mother who makes the best choices in her personal life). While watching the film, I think Ben’s presence does suggest there is more going on with/in Sheba than Barbara (and the audience) had expected. Sheba suddenly becomes so real, too real maybe. I figured Barbara wanted Sheba’s family life to be more strained (or, better yet, liberated or invisible even) so she could swoop in and save her. The moment when the fifteen-year-old puts on Ben’s hat and Sheba asks him to take it off OR when Barbara tries to get Sheba to miss her son’s drama performance to sit with her while the cat is euthenized suggests that Sheba’s relationship with her son will not get messed up by her own stupid mistakes. And it doesn’t really. I come back to the confession where Sheba admits that she’s been so good since marrying that she deserved an opportunity to fuck things up a bit. Then again, I refused to play the game you’re playing. Sheba had a son with downs syndrome. I just let that be and didn’t imagine it was supposed to make me readjust everything that had come before (that she is now somehow more special or more tainted or more something). That being said, I completely disagree that Ben’s presence somehow marks Sheba’s family as “impaired.” Actually, Sheba’s family (and Sheba), even in the end, struck me as a pretty damn functional family.

  5. Okay. Maybe my reading “creates” the problem it diagnoses. And yet…

    You say: Ben “signif[ies] nothing more than how challenging it is to raise a family with a disabled child” — and *this* is exactly where someone in disability studies stops and examines the assumptions. We naturalize the greater burden of the disabled. And yet given the limited evidence we see in the film, Polly (the teenage girl) demands as much if not more time for the parents–they stop to discuss her boyfriend trouble three, four times … Yet it would be weird, if not sort of misogynistic, to note how much of a burden to raise a teenage girl. Those burdens (or the burdens of the boy Connelly’s parents) are seen as typical, demanding yet ‘normal’. Ben signifies something GREATER. I don’t think that’s necessarily true (‘though it may be socially true). And I don’t think it’s a leap for a viewer to stop and think that Ben’s disability, like the Connelly boy’s Irishness (as you note), might signify beyond the ‘mere’ narrative detail.

  6. I’m with you; if I had as much interest as you I would follow the lead voraciously; but I am not as invested in this as you so I found Ben’s presence to complicate our reception of Sheba. I did feel as if the film gave equal time to both daughter and son (their social and school lives) and while both of these characters brought different kinds of issues to the table (so to speak), neither really have anything to do with the dramatic action. I guess Ben’s presence didn’t set off any red flags for me. It seemed to deepen the narrative and refocus my approach to Sheba as a character. But you got me on all points: Connelly’s Irishness; his sexual prowess and physical presence certainly engaged some of my own interests as the unique representations of female subjectivity did for Gio. It is a good film. I’m not sure it adds up to much (what exactly do I mean by that he thinks as he types) more than that (perhaps because the film refuses to devolve too far into neurotic/histrionic melodrama; it undermines generic expectations . . . I know I was waiting for someone to die for about a half hour and was quite pleased when such expectations were denied). It is a great character piece (fiercely performed by Dench and Blanchett with many lovely moments from Nighy) but I can’t help but feel as if the narrative is grounded on a hill of clay.

  7. i’ll write more tomorrow — too beat now, after my first day of classes. but, mike, i am aware that down syndrome is not affected by the father’s age, while being affected by the mother’s. my suggestion was that ben’s specific disability (down’s syndrome, the genetic disorder that points to older women) gestures here towards richard’s age — not literally, but metaphorically, through substitution. i realize i didn’t make this clear the first time around.

    my mom is waiting for me (she’s visiting) and i have to give her her bath. don’t even have time to finish reading your comments!

  8. I hope you got your Mom washed okay, Gio. That can be a hassle.

    Another thing I remembered: the Connelly boy notes that he can’t take art in the normal periods because he’s “special needs” … which opens up a variety of interesting, complicated parallels with Ben.

    In fact, the more I think about the film, the more I think the film cues us with stereotypical assumptions about normalcy and deviant identity/behavior but (with Ben, sure, but also with Barbara and with *every* character–even Polly, who worries about her ‘non-normal’ body, that she’s “fat as fuck”) there is a persistent, focused deconstruction of such fantasies as the neat ideal of normal/healthy (wealthy, whole, happy, secure). A disability studies approach–zeroing in on the “question” of Ben’s representation–fruitfully centers our readings of the film, rather than attending to its margins or mere “reality effects”.

    He says boldly.

  9. mike, your reading of this film through the glasses of disability studies is certainly very interesting. it’s fascinating how much of ourselves we bring to what we watch/read/experience.

    i, with jeff, saw ben as just a way of rooting sheba, making her appear as a normal, harried mom, with a normal (yes!), happy family. that richard is particularly tender towards ben just confirms that. it’s a good family. sheba is not a pretty young thing with no baggage. ben and the rest of the family make her affair with the student much more tortured, dramatic, desperate.

    what’s interesting to me (and this is underscored by what jeff refers to as the camera’s love affair with the boy’s body) is that the rapport between sheba and the student is depicted as purely physical. there is nothing between the two but the entanglement of bodies. the camera roams over the boy’s body because sheba’s gaze does. so i saw the camera’s pleasure in watching the boy (not only his body, but his beautiful, naughty, seductive face) as an extension of sheba’s gaze. even after having sex, their roles stay exactly the same: she’s the teacher, he’s the student. the emotional dynamics between them are unaltered, untouched.

    not so with barbara. barbara tries to conquer sheba on the emotional front. while, clearly, she craves her body as well (the scene in which she caresses her arms is harrowing — and why, exactly, does sheba get so uncomfortable? her discomfort seems more knowing that the film makes likely at that point), she mostly wants intimacy, closeness, love. barbara delights in the moments in which sheba confides in her — you have no sense that she wants more, really. she wants a very special, very close friend to share her life with. even though her physical attraction to sheba comes through, you have a sense she’d be just fine with having sheba around as her special companion. she *is* just fine when sheba is living with her. she’s as happy as a clam.

    but then sheba discovers the journals (i don’t remember why that happens) and i got a bit uncomfortable. does she freak out because barbara has manipulatively damaged her life, or does she freak out because of barbara’s homoerotic desire? i think that’s a reaction that could use some unpacking. what is it that freaks sheba out?

    i like, though, that she doesn’t flee. i like that she doesn’t perceive barbara as physically threatening or repulsive (she doesn’t, right?). but the scene in which she goes back home with ashes on her head, woah, that’s a sad scene. what is she going back to? why is she going back? is this total defeat or is it reality calling? what *is* there for her besides same old same old? it’s too bad, i think, that her return home should be portrayed as so doomed. she has a good life. before all of this started she was happy. she was making art. the film should have let us see that she’s not going back to jail.

    jeff, you remark on sheba’s mistakes. but what do they mean? what does a woman want? according to this film, sex and love. and why are they inaccessible both to sheba and to barbara? what does this say about a woman’s life?

    and is it true? are they really inaccessible to both in the same way? sheba is back where she started, minus her getaway job. she’s back to domesticity, ben, polly, richard. as for barbara, well, she’s giving herself a fresh new chance, isn’t she, nudge nudge wink wink?

    okay, i didn’t really address many of the points you guys made, but, rather, followed the muse.

  10. One quick response and I’ll try to work up a better response later. Sheba discovers the gold stars while living with Barbara but then she finds a crumpled up piece of paper that includes some thoughts about her . . . her mania to find the diaries seems to suggest she is now realizing that Barbara, somehow (the horny male teacher’s visit to Barbara’s apartment to talk about Sheba felt a bit overcooked didn’t you think), is the one responsible for bringing the truth crashing down around her feet. I think when she returns home at the end, she is returning to the place where she belongs.

  11. yes. i had forgotten. the whole thing is a bit overcooked, no? her search for the diaries is so incredibly frantic… and all because of a few gold stars and a crumpled reference!

    horny… dunno about that! the poor guy just fancied the girl! :-) it didn’t take much to talk him out of it, either.

  12. we watched it tonight. terrific performances but we both found the narrative of (deviant) desire to be troubling. i’m really stealing from sunhee here, but it is unlikely she will post: heterosexuality is presented as erotic (even when it is pedophilic) and lesbian desire as monstrous (and sunhee pointed perceptively to how the camera differently frames and lingers on the acts of heterosexual sex and dench’s attempts at physical intimacy with blanchett). somewhat reductive, sure, but not to be lost sight of in the discussion/portrayal of loneliness and aging and desire for youth and so on–none of which really needs a monstrous lesbian to be effective.

    yes, the film does point out, as gio suggests above, that the desire of older men for younger women (nighy for blanchett) and even middle-aged attractive school female school teachers for boys (blanchett for the kid) is normal and can be expressed whereas the desires of old women (and especially closeted old women) cannot. but the film also takes the sensationalist path of making the old woman in this case a near-psychopath (with a restraining order against her from an earlier target of affection, collecting strands of hair, emotionally blackmailing and manipulating)–making her literally abnormal in the process.

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