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Scoot over, Lana. Bette Davis, better check the rearview: you’ve got
someone on your tail. And speaking of— “Paging Miss Crawford. Joan
Crawford on the set.” And while we’re at it, might as well post the
notices for the midnight screenings, circa 2015: TONIGHT ONLY, at
MIDNIGHT: NOTES ON A SCANDAL.
What a guilty pleasure. What a scene-chewing twosome, in the
tradition of Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen in Rich and Famous
(itself a remake of Old Acquaintances with Miriam Hopkins and Bette
Davis). What a welcome melodrama, not seen since the days of The
Killing of Sister George and The Children’s Hour. Already, there are
lines of dialogue just begging to be tossed back to the screen, la
Rocky Horror and Showgirls (itself The Greatest Movie Ever Made).
Briskly paced at just over ninety minutes, Notes on a Scandal moves
like a train hellbent on its calamitous destination and the
narrative never flags. Philip Glass’s music is as pitch perfect as
the lines in Patrick Marber’s screenplay—and the result is the sort
of film that used to haunt entire afternoons spent playing hooky
from school. Movies like Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte and Bette and
Joan in Baby Jane and Barbara Stanwyck in The Strange Love of Martha
Ivers. Now it’s Dame Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett going at it—with
escalating tension. This is Fatal Attraction for a new
generation—with a cat instead of a pet rabbit, and instead of
adultery, the transgression of teacher/student love. With a nubile
Andrew Simpson playing the libidinous student who stalks his art
teacher, it’s the sort of film that could almost make you yearn for
a life at the front of a classroom. But then there’s Dench in an
advanced state of psychosis—and when she can’t always get what she
wants—well, then “hell hath no fury…” More credible than female mud
wrestling, Notes on a Scandal is delicious dirt.
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