Crisp dialogue and virtuoso performances make this film enjoyable but it leaves one with a sort of cinematic indigestion. Perhaps it is the atmosphere of cynical mean-spiritedness that ruins so much contemporary British art -as though truth were nasty, a bitter medicine that had to be taken for one's own good. While Judi Dench has a romp with the part of the repressed, evil Barbara Covett. Cate Blanchett's Sheba Hart is so underwritten that her character doesn't stand a chance. When the story starts to liven up every character morphs into an embarrassing pantomime stereotype. The Philip Glass score sounds as if it had been waiting for years in his deep freeze to be used, it is too loud and has nothing to do with the film. Too bad, there is a lot of great talent involved here and ultimately it all seems wasted.
Review of Notes on a Scandal
