A pair of queens

Noel Vera

In the wake of Helen Mirren's sweep of Hollywood's annual horse
derbies for playing Her Royal Highness (a victory that was for the
most part deserved, having cracked open that unattractive granite
façade to reveal the hint--and it's the sense that you're getting a
mere hint that's so compelling--of something warm and vital pulsing
inside), two equally impressive performances seem to have been
forgotten: Judi Dench's and Cate Blanchett's, for this picture.

Richard Eyre's adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel "What Was She
Thinking: Notes on a Scandal" doesn't do much in the way of using
the medium to tell its story, beyond the occasional cliché of using
handheld shots to suggest the chaos of reporters surrounding a
notorious public figure, or the benign chaos that reigns when a
family goes about its business of contented living, but the theater
veteran does inspire wonderful work from these two royalties. As
with his previous picture "Iris," a biopic about author Iris
Murdoch, he pairs Ms. Dench with a younger woman--there, Kate
Winslet, as the younger Murdoch; here Blanchett, as Sheba (short for
Bathsheba) Hart, the object of not-so-obscure desire by the rather
obviously named Barbara Covett (Dench).

Covett, a longstanding history teacher who has become both fixture
and institution, grimly describes herself as a "battle-axe." She's
quietly formidable when submitting an insultingly succinct report to
the school principal; she's equally formidable facing down two
battling teenagers, one of which has just called Ms. Hart "a
tart." "You will apologize at once," she informs the offending
youth, who is cowed enough to comply.

Sheba is grateful; she develops a close friendship with the battle-
axe. It's part of the novel and film's scheme, of course, to keep
her unaware of just what she's getting into; we already know from
the start. Using the age-old device of the voiceover narrating
excerpts from a private memoir, we're privy to Barbara's thoughts,
and they're just a firm step short of being apocalyptic: "In the old
days we confiscated cigarettes and wank mags," she muses, watching
the stream of students pass; "now it's knives and crack cocaine. And
they call it progress." At the school departmental meeting her
report consisted of a single page noting that the department's
results were "below the national average but above the level of
catastrophe. Recommendation: no change necessary."

Voiceover may be an old device but used carefully it can be
effective. It's amusing, for example, to take note of Barbara's
words and see Eyre's camera either confirm their acerbic
observations or give away their delusional nature. When Barbara
first spots Sheba, she can't make up her mind whether the young
woman was "a sphinx or stupid;" when they later become friends she
declares that Sheba "is the one I've been waiting for." She's
surprised to see that Sheba's husband, Richard (Bill Nighy, always
excellent) is an older man--is, in fact, a former professor who has
left his wife to marry one of his students, and that the son they
had together suffers from Down's syndrome. When the family gambols
or dances together, Barbara puts this all down as the self-indulgent
frolicking of the "privileged;" all we see is a reasonably loving
family, happy with itself.

What makes Barbara such a compelling character, however, isn't so
much that spiky armor she wears for protection but the howling
loneliness hidden away inside the armor. You catch glimpses of it in
the eager way she prepares herself when Sheba invites Barbara to
dinner, a singular event, as she puts it, in the "arctic wasteland"
of her social calendar; you see it in the hungry way she looks at
Sheba despite her verbal disapproval--the way her gaze lingers on
Sheba's slim hands, graceful cleavage, wide, rouged lips.

Blanchett and Dench--with Nighy's skillful support--all play
together so beautifully that you may not notice how carefully Eyre
(or Heller, possibly) cleverly stacks the deck. We're asked to
believe that Sheba despite her loving family would be naïve enough
to fall under the spell of a fifteen year old boy with all the
finesse and subtlety of a teenage Neanderthal--when you read about
cases where a teacher has had an affair with her underaged pupil,
you almost always find that there's a pattern, a consistency in the
psychological makeup (they've done this before, or had this done to
themselves (yes, Richard fell in love with her as a student, but as
Richard points out, she was twenty at the time)). Blanchett plays
Sheba as a dewy young doe, more innocent--though physically older--
than her boyfriend; we're asked to believe that she's less sexual
predator than sexual victim, or at least chronically unable to make
up her mind as to the right thing to do. Likewise Barbara: after
having so skillfully and patiently manipulated Sheba, we're asked to
believe that she would jeopardize it all for a dead housecat; worse,
we're asked to believe she would give up her blackmail scheme so
easily, when the classic blackmailer knows well that it's the threat
of exposure that gives one power--once one actually reveals the
secret, one's power is lost.

But never mind psychological plausibility--Eyre and Heller seem
determined to provide the maximum number of revelations and dramatic
confrontations, plus endless footage of cameramen and reporters
running after one fleeing fugitive or another, seemingly confident
that whatever improbables might arise their wonderful pair of actors
will wave it all regally away. And to a large extent, they're right--
Blanchett and Dench go a long way towards helping us buy this rather
clunky thriller with the Sapphic subtext and requisite Philip Glass
music score (Glass is apparently the go-to guy for composing music
for obsessive characters in movies; his droning, repetitive tones
naturally, almost comically, evoke single-minded resolve in a
protagonist), confident in the idea that if they can't give us some
kind of truth about their subject matter, they can at least amuse us
for ninety minutes. I can't take this seriously as some kind of
great meditation on woman-on-woman relationships, or even as some
kind of profound comment on loneliness or fixation, but I can enjoy
it for what it is: a fairly well-made entertainment, showcasing two
members of the English-language cinema's acting royalty, on their
very best game.

(First published in Businessworld, 3/9/07)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)