Notes on a Scandal

Sheba Hart is a new art teacher at a private school in London. She has an affair with a fifteen-year-old student and is discovered in the act by an older teacher, Barbara Covett, who has befriended her. Covett, it appears, is interested in Hart, and she uses her knowledge of the affair to manipulate and pressure the younger teacher into a closer relationship. This is a form of extortion, of blackmail, and it is what this film is about.

Notes on a Scandal (2006) is an intense British melodrama based on a novel by Zoe Heller. The interest in the film comes from its study of the characters of Sheba and Barbara. Dench and Blanchett are excellent actors, and it is difficult to think of a film in which either has been better. Dench is a physical actor whose use of facial mannerisms, expressions, twitches, twinges becomes its own language. Her eyes alone speak millions of words—they practically allow us to read her thoughts. Blanchett acts through more conventional but nonetheless effective means. Hers is the more conflicted character, though it is easier to understand her than the character played by Dench.

In the film, Sheba is married to an older man, a former teacher whom she married when she was around twenty. Her husband later links this fact to her affair with the student, as if she is in some way responding to the initial circumstances of their marriage by replicating them. Theirs is a marriage in crises—of boredom, ennui—long before the affair with the student begins, and indeed her desire for release, for return to her younger days, may be the catalyst that leads to the affair. Sheba has two children—a disaffected adolescent daughter and a boy of around twelve, afflicted with Down's Syndrome. They are two of the victims of the mess the film portrays. But the affair with a student, the marriage in crisis, the wounded son and daughter, are not really the film's subject, though they do draw our attention.

Barbara Covett is an old-fashioned, high-toned high school teacher who is a year from retirement. When she first befriends Sheba, it all seems innocent enough. She is the older, more experienced teacher who breaks up a fight that Sheba is incapable of stopping. She gives advice to Sheba about how to handle students. At first Barbara behaves in a motherly way to Sheba. Gradually it becomes clear that she is interested in a different kind of relationship.

The film suggests that Barbara is a lesbian who insinuates herself into the lives of younger women whom she is attracted to. She writes about her infatuations and attractions in her diary—where the notes of the title are recorded. Her diary is the record of an imagined fantasy life where she describes what she plans to do, comments on her plans, speculates about the future. It would be simple enough if Barbara announced her interests to the woman whom she is attracted to. Then the younger woman could either accept or reject her, and the narrative would develop accordingly. But this she does not do. Instead by subtle insinuations she manipulates the situation, causing serious damage to the lives of the women who interest her. When Sheba makes clear she is not interested in a life with Barbara, by indirect means the older woman spreads the news of the affair with the student. As a result Sheba is arrested, loses her job, and is thrown out by her husband. Ultimately, the principal learns that Barbara knew of the affair but did nothing about it, and she is fired too.

Barbara presents herself as (and believes herself to be) a person of upright probity. She is outraged by Sheba's affair with the student and demands that the relationship end immediately. Yet she also uses her knowledge of the relationship, and her promise to Sheba that she will reveal it to no one, as a way to bring the younger woman closer. She plots to destroy Sheba's marriage, just as she plotted to destroy the marriage of an earlier love interest. (That woman, we learn, took out a restraining order against Barbara). Barbara writes in her diary of the life she plans to have with Sheba, who comes to stay with her after her husband forces her to leave their home. Barbara seems wholly unaware of, or indifferent to, the contradictions in her character and behavior.

Does this film demonize lesbians as obsessive, evil, plotting stalkers? (Basic Instinct may be a distant relative). On the one hand it's possible to see Barbara as an individual, not as a stereotype. Sheba herself calls Barbara a vampire, and there is truth to the charge, for Barbara sucks the lifeblood, metaphorically, out of those younger women who interest her. At the end of the film, Barbara meets another young woman in a park and begins a conversation. The cycle seems to begin again.

On the other hand, casual viewers will probably not make these distinctions and may see Barbara as representative of a larger group of women. To these viewers Barbara confirms everything they already believe about lesbians. She is the corrupt older woman, preying on the life of the younger woman she is attracted to, plotting to destroy her marriage, unconcerned with the children she is injuring. Barbara to them is a threat to marriage and morality.

This is a consummately acted film. The characterizations are excellent, and the acting is consistently good, from major characters to minor ones. But this is a confused film too—about an older woman who exploits a younger woman who in turn is exploiting the boy she is sleeping. By titillating us with a student-teacher love affair and a ruthless, destructive older woman willing to do anything to get the woman she loves, it avoids any real issue, even that of the exploited student—he breaks off the relationship with his teacher—he says that he cannot do anything to help her, now that the scandal has come out. As if, after all, Sheba is the victim. She is a victim, but she is also a victimizer, as is the woman who victimizes her. The film cannot make sense of this. It invites us to stare and gawk at the disaster that ensues.

What is the point of this film, other than scandalizing our sensibilities?