Barbara Covett (Dench) is your typical uptight unpopular spinster, but also a respected teacher at an all-boys school in London. She has opinions and judgements, all of which she diarizes in great detail in volumes and volumes of notebooks at the end of the day. With the arrival of the new art teacher - Sheba Hart (Blanchett) - the two form a unique friendship. That is until Barbara finds out that Sheba is sleeping with one of her students.
Things take a turn for the dysfunctional and the deceptively manipulative when Barbara decides to use the information as collateral to hold onto her friendship with Sheba. The result is Sheba being pulled by the secret she shares with Barbara and the need to remain a good and loving mother and wife to her family.
Based on the book by Zoe Heller, the film turns from a drama to a psychological thriller as we watch Barbara manipulate and Sheba for her own benefit. It's interesting to note that these kinds of friendships between women happen more often than we care to know. That the sheer loneliness of both these characters clinging onto one another, is enough for them to destroy each other in the process.
The DVD releases a healthy amount of Special Features including:
- audio commentary with director Richard Eyre
- 'Notes on A Scandal: The Story of Two Obsessions' and 'Notes on a Scandal: Behind The Scenes' - are both rather fascinating featurettes in exploring both the film adaptation of the novel by Zoe Heller and the script to screen process with Director Richard Eyre. Interviews with the cast are included with their thoughts in how to approach these rarely seen complex characters.
- 'In Character with Cate Blanchett' - where she breaks down both the character of Sheba and Barbara and their relationship
- Webisodes - short promo behind the scenes clips
- 'Judi and Cate: Behind The Scandal'
- 'The Screenplay'
- 'Judi Dench'
- 'Cate Blanchett'
- And a Collection of clips from a 'A Conversation with Cate Blanchett and Bill Nighy' where essentially Bill Nighy (who plays Cate Blanchett's husband in the film) interviews Cate about the process of acting and the motivation of their characters in the film.
