Notes on a Scandal
Grade: B+

Dame Judi Dench is delightfully nasty in this repressed British lesbian variation of Fatal Attraction. She plays Barbara, an icy and lonely history teacher who befriends Sheba, a comely art teacher played by Cate Blanchett. Cate is as great as usual, but she had better beware that we're going to start taking her talent for granted if she keeps making 5,000 movies a year.
When Barbara discovers that Sheba is making it with a 15-year-old male student, she agrees to keep the scandal a secret on the tacit condition that Sheba becomes her "intimate" friend (this job description includes accepting unsolicited massages from Barbara).
Director Richard Eyre keeps things moving at a brisk pace, and the mesmerizing voice-over narration by Dench oozes with bitchy comments that are worthy of Bette Davis at her best. And Bill Nighy - who is currently getting raves on Broadway for his role opposite Julianne Moore in The Vertical Hour - brings humor and surprising emotional depth to his portrayal of Sheba's cuckolded husband.
The movie's main flaw is that the plot ceases to make sense about two-thirds of the way through the movie. For instance, Sheba has witnessed Barbara in all her demented and obsessive glory, but she decides to go live with her anyway, with the added bonus that all the tabloids are camped outside the apartment waiting for the latest scoop on the school sex debacle. It's a truly stupid plot development that only exists so that Barbara and Sheba can eventually have the knock-down-drag-out bitch fight that everyone's been waiting for.
Based on Zoe Heller's novel, which was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize.