Notes on a Scandal

My abiding memory of Zoe Heller, who was in the year above me at Oxford, was her shoving copious quantities of cigarettes down Anglo Saxon tutor Vince “Dizzy” Gillespie’s top at our welcoming party. I remember her being a little scary, rumoured to be very bright, and that’s about it. Probably never spoke more than a dozen words to her.

Not much of a scandal, but I try my best.

I’ve settled into quite a nice routine now on Mondays. Pilates, salmon terryaki bento box, and cinema.

You will have guessed that this week it was the Screen on Baker Street and the film was Notes on a Scandal. I was very impressed. A very tight film, with little slack, it gets stuck in pretty much from the off and the pacing is good right to the end.

Dame Judy is fantastic and definitely Oscar worthy. I loved Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth but rapidly went off her due to her dull, worthy and overly serious “off screen persona”, but here she is very good – in fact her slightly irritating feyness works to the film’s advantage.

To me there was something of the quintessence of the Jacobean or Elizabethan tragedy about the plot – I’m thinking especially of the Changeling and Othello - as the two principal characters, with their fatal character flaws (lust, pride, envy, neediness) circle around each other like wayward kites bound to wrap their trailing ropes around each other and drag each other down to the ground.

Marvellous.

So good it either stopped the crinkly wrappers wrinkling or I didn’t notice.