Notes on a Scandal
2006 · Movie · 92 min. · United Kingdom
Barbara Covett (Dame Judi Dench) is a veteran and cynical schoolteacher who is close to retirement. She is barely tolerated by her less brilliant and acerbic colleagues who know nothing about her private life which consists mainly of taking care of Portia, her aging cat, and spending countless hours alone. The only means she has found to take the edge off her desperate loneliness is writing in her journal. When Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), a younger, attractive woman, joins the faculty as an art teacher, Barbara watches her from afar and has nothing but caustic things to say in her diary about her clothing and her care-free manner. Despite her disdain for this woman, Barbara finds herself reaching out to her. Sheba responds by inviting her to dinner at her house to meet Sheba's lecturer husband (Bill Nighy), who is twenty years her senior, and their two children, a sexy and rebellious 16-year-old daughter and a younger boy with Downs Syndrome.
Direction Richard Eyre
Cast Judi Dench · Cate Blanchett · Bill Nighy · Andrew Simpson · Philip Davis · Michael Maloney · Juno Temple · Max Lewis · Joanna Scanlan · Julia McKenzie · Shaun Parkes · Tom Georgeson · Emma Kennedy · Syreeta Kumar
Soundtrack Philip Glass
Screenplay Patrick Marber · Zoë Heller
Cinematography Chris Menges
Original title Notes on a Scandal
6.9
12K votes (FilmAffinity)
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