Notes on a Scandal (2006)

A really harrowing, twisted love story I wish I’d written.

Judi Dench is Barbara, a high school teacher near retirement, who does not suffer fools gladly, and who can quell an unruly class with a glance.

She forms snobby preconceptions about the new young teacher, Sheba, (Cate Blanchett) and makes some slighting and acerbic references to her in her diary. Later, after being accepted into the young woman’s family circle, Barbara confides in her diary, “I always knew we’d be friends”, a typical example of her very powerful ability to bullshit herself.

The friendship comes about when Barbara helps Sheba handle a situation where two boys are fighting.

When invited to Sheba’s home, Barbara finds her preconceptions crumbling. Sheba is married to a considerably older man, and has a teen daughter and 12-year-old son played by a real Down Syndrome actor. After lunch the mother, father and boy spend some time dancing, which Barbara characterizes in her diary as “a rather mortifying family tradition …. They do things differently in bourgeois bohemia.” Of course by now she’s head over heels in love with Sheba, and convinces herself that the family is just a prison that Sheba must be freed from, for a new, wonderful and authentic life with -who else? – herself. She is totally blind to the great aspects of Sheba’s family life, which is full of genuine love, as compared to her own emptiness and envy. (Barbara’s last name is Covett – ha ha. Sheba’s last name is Hart – ha ha.) Yet Barbara deludes herself in her diary – “Our lives are acutely similar in so many respects.”

But… she accidentally observes Sheba giving a blow job to a 15-year-old student, and calls her to account. Sheba tells the story – it’s partly lust and partly feeling sorry for the kid’s bullshit story of having a brutal father and some kind of messed-up mother. In flashbacks we see her meeting with the kid, screwing on the ground in the railroad yard, etc. “You’ve done my brain in,” Sheba tells the kid. That’s for sure.

Barbara tells Sheba she must break it off, and if she pays that price, Barbara will keep the secret. But the kid doesn’t want to go away. He sends Sheba obscene text messages, and shows up outside her house on Christmas, where they’re necking right there almost in the midst of her family.

Barbara is away visiting a friend or more probably, sister, who is sympathetic and tries to reach out to her. “I’m sorry about Jennifer, she was lovely.” and asks if there’s anybody special now. Barbara is all haughty about it.

Barbara visits Sheba, thinking she has given up the affair with the student. She talks about how in girlhood, she and her friends used to “stroke” each other. She insists that Sheba close her eyes and hold out her arm, which she caresses. Supposedly it is very relaxing. Clearly it’s giving Sheba the creeps, and she says that’s enough.

Barbara bitterly harangues Sheba about how stupid, misguided and deluded she is to be in love with the boy. Every cruel word is more applicable to Barbara’s own self-delusion in being in love with Sheba.

Sheba is really interesting. Even though this “friendship” has been forced on her, she seems to reach into a heart full of compassion and find genuine friendliness toward Barbara, making a virtue out of necessity. She is really warm and giving, such a together person that she manages to find a way to, at least partly, enjoy the coerced relationship with Barbara. She seems to have made an inner decision that she’ll try her best to feel compassion, and extend herself toward this lonely old lady. Which of course only encourages further encroachment.

In her diary, Barbara characterizes Sheba as “sweetly grateful.” “We are now entering a delicate new phase. We are silently and stealthily negotiating the terms of a life lived together.” Which is total bullshit, only she manages to see it that way. She tells Sheba her version of the Jennifer story, and thinks they have reached an understanding, that Sheba has made a tacit promise to leave her family and join Barbara.

But Barbara finds out that the affair with the student continues, and tells Sheba again that it must end – giving her an undeserved second chance, for which she of course feels that Sheba is profoundly indebted to her.

Then when Barbara’s cat dies, it’s bigtime emotional blackmail. She tries to make Sheba stay with her at the vet while the cat is euthanized, and help with the interment. But Sheba’s son is in a play, and the family is waiting for her, and she must go. There’s a big scene, with the husband blowing up, etc.

Barbara, utterly betrayed, sadly buries her cat all alone, thinking how badly she’s been used. “Jennifer said I’m too intense – meaning what, exactly?….. That I will go to the ends of the earth for someone I admire?” She really, truly believes that she is the only one who knows how to love deeply and steadfastly.

Having just buried the cat, she looks even older and more haggard than usual, face all blotchy with an assortment of colors, etc. Then a male teacher comes over, wanting to talk to her about Sheba. Has she ever mentioned him, and would Barbara put in a good word for him with Sheba? Aha – here is the perfect instrument of revenge. Barbara tells him that not only does Sheba not spare a single thought for him, she’s carrying on with a student. Then she sits back waiting to see how long the destruction will take. She still hangs out with the family, and is in fact there when the there when the student’s mother arrives and beats the crap out of Sheba.

Barbara gets called to the principal’s office and accused of having known about, and covered up, the teacher-student affair. Of course she staunchly denies this. But the principal has been talking with Jennifer, learning that she was so harassed by Barbara she had to take out a restraining order and ultimately, move away. He tells Barbara to resign. The boy makes threatening moves toward her, but she’s not the only one dealing with troubles. She goes to Sheba’s in time to hear the teenage daughter denouncing her.

Sheba’s husband wants her to leave, and she is now utterly vanquished, reduced to throwing herself on Barbara’s mercy, asking if she can stay for a while. She moves in, and a while later Barbara’s diary says, “This last month has been the most delicious time of my life…marvelous intensity…”

Sheba finds a diary page and tears the place up looking for more. She finds other diaries and freaks out, raging at Barbara, calling her, among other things, a vampire. Then, exhausted, she tries to straighten Barbara out, and show her how she misread the signs and misinterpreted the amount of friendship that Sheba was able to offer her. But the power of self-delusion is much too strong, and Barbara just doesn’t get it.

In a bathtub reverie, Barbara reflects on how impossible it is for people such as Sheba to understand the loneliness that makes the random touch of a bus conductor, for instance, into a major erotic incident. She’s totally oblivious to the fact that it was the exact same impulse that drove Sheba into the arms of the boy student. There’s no end to this woman’s ability to bullshit herself.

Sheba goes back to her husband, who of course accepts her, but of course there’s a huge scandal and she ends up doing jail time. Meanwhile Barbara, of course, finds another “love.”