Notes on a Scandal.

"What is Notes on a Scandal?" asks Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. Rhetorically, of course. "Well, for starters, it is a painstakingly classy package. The film's director, Richard Eyre, ran the National Theater in London, and the screenwriter, Patrick Marber, wrote the play Closer, which became something of a bigger cultural event when Mike Nichols decided to transpose it to the screen. (The composer for this film, doodle-doodle-doodle, is Philip Glass.) The actors in Notes on a Scandal are equally distinguished: [Judi] Dench and [Cate] Blanchett are among the finest on the market today, and each can deliver expert performances, even when, as is the case here, their roles are false and hollow. The performers sell the goods, but the goods are cheap."

Updated through 1/3.

Michelle Orange at the Reeler: "Fans of Dench or Blanchett or both will have an absolute shit fit watching the actresses grab their roles, and each other, with both hands (and in Dench's case, possibly a foot); the even better news is that the material they have to work with is more than up to the challenge, and the film itself a measured and yet gloriously overblown study of desire, entitlement and the twists we experience while shuttling between the two."

Jason Clark in Slant: "Dench is the best thing about this deliciously overheated melodrama, directed with too-brisk economy by Richard Eyre (Stage Beauty) and scored with typical whiplash by Philip Glass, whose orchestral headaches actually work in this context."

"Whatever Heller is lampooning in her wickedly smart exploration of unequal female friendships - those strangely ubiquitous associations based on the tacit agreement that the less fortunate friend will validate the feelings of martyrdom of the more fortunate friend - Marber and Eyre couldn't be less interested," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "What they go for is maximum bombast... Sexy, aspirational and post-politically correct, Notes on a Scandal could turn out to be the Fatal Attraction of the oughties."

And again: it's "a grim piece of work - Fatal Attraction for the art-house crowd, shorn of its predecessor's fearful misogyny," writes Robert Wilonsky in the Voice.

Updates, 12/29: "One thing that marks the dark brilliance of Notes on a Scandal is the level of the acting, but that is just part of a larger issue: its vision," writes the Washington Post's Stephen Hunter. "I can't remember a film that sees the here and now more precisely, one that offers total believability in the tone and motive of its characters and then goes further, showing us a whole and completely recognizable world."

Marcy Dermansky talks with Cate Blanchett.

The Reeler meets Marber.

"Chris Menges, the soft-spoken cinematographer who also shot Dirty Pretty Things, The Killing Fields and North Country says it was the screenplay that first drew him to the project," writes Deborah Netburn in the Los Angeles Times. "To get that feeling of spontaneity Menges shot most of the film with a handheld camera that weighed about 36 pounds. 'It was quite heavy, but the actors could move as they felt inspired to because they didn't have to hit marks and they were not locked down to routines,' he said. 'And if you are using that kind of camera you respond emotionally and physically to their performance. It is more like a dance.'"

Update, 1/3: "[T]he book's subtler sapphic undercurrent here risks curdling into a retro evil-predatory-lesbo vibe," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. "Still, the movie's minor flaws are more than compensated for by a gold-plated cast."

Posted by dwhudson at December 27, 2006 10:05 AM