DVDs From the Library-"Notes on a Scandal"

DVDs From the Library

In the library there is a bin full of DVDs. One may take up to five and keep them for a week. Don’t forget to return them on time or you will pay a hefty over-due penalty, or worse, they will develop a terminal mold and eat your furniture, flooring and, eventually, your brain. Join me now as I take a look at one…

“Notes on a Scandal”
Staring- Judi Dench & Cate Blanchett

I have trouble with British films.  The problem is in the translation from whatever language it is they speak and the one I speak.  They are both called ‘English’ but I have a great deal of difficulty in understanding the dialog.  This film was no different in that respect but after a half hour or so I got used to the ‘lingo’ and got into the plot. 

The plot was wound around a young teacher’s (Cate Blanchett) affair with a fifteen year old student which is discovered by one of the teacher’s coworkers (Judi Dench).  At first it is not very clear what the older spinster-coworker is aiming at by manipulating-in fact blackmailing-her younger friend but that is what she does.  Dame Dentch proves to be a very distasteful old bitch and I could barely watch the closeups of her sans make-up,  Really revolting.  It is later revealed that Dentch is very unbalanced and spiteful and when her own advances are repulsed by Blanchett,  Dentch ‘drops a dime’ on Blanchette and the pedophile is arrested.  Cast out of her own home and, having no where to turn, she is still blind to Dench's betrayal, and she moves in with her older 'friend'.  Blanchette finds the spinster's sick and twisted diaries revealing the manipulation and betrayal and…well that’s enough of the plot.  I refuse to give up the very end.

Once I got past the thick British accents the actors came through nicely and the plot kept me mildly amused for an hour plus.  It was slow sometimes.  I’d recommend you have a couple of ‘Stouts’ available if you want to get through this one.  In fact, that is what I give this film…two cheap beers. If you want a 'four cheap beer' movie about pedophiles better go with James Mason and Sue Lyons in "Lolita".