What a shocking horrible story! And so beautifully acted!
Dame Jud i Dench, with a voice and enunciation that few others in the world possess, is the narrator of this story. She reads to us from her diary as she writes it, telling us what she wants to from her point of view. Barbara (Judi Dench) chronicales in that diary her sick “friendship” with Sheba (Cate Blanchett).
The movie is based on Zoe Heller’s book, What Was She Thinking.
In a small school somewhere in England, the “arfully desheveled” Sheba arrives as the new art teacher. Sexy and classy, she gets everyone’s attention, including that of Barbara Covett. With her ice cold eyes and razor sharp brain, she subjects Sheba to a brutal scrutiny – only to end up falling in love with her.
Sheba, meanwhile, is very busy sexing up one of her 15-year-old students. How’s that for sordid. Very sweet girl and all that but oddly naive and weak-willed, Sheba soaks up all of Barbara’s friendship and help without realizing that she is the old cat’s next prey. Yes, Barbara was as much a friend to someone else earlier, but that’s another scandal.
Things get unbearably messy as Barbara discovers her thing with the boy amd after seething with rage cools down enough to figure out how to use the situation to get closer to Sheba. Closer and closer until she’s uncomfortably close. Sheba’s family and her way-older husband (Bill Nighy) and her mentally challenged son and bratty precosious teenage daugher, all get thrown into the mix. And the boy… yes, that’s another mess.Anyway, things absolutely explode.
Some say it gets hot and melodramatic in here. But hey, I’m an Indian. All I can say is that the performances by just about everyone, but specially Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, are superb.
I’d been wondering where I’d read that title and it finally occured to me that I’d actually read the book. The book had read tolerable till 40-50% of it for its language. I even found myself writing down some phrases and words that I used to do as a teenager. Except, Sheba’s fixation for the boy had started irritating me no end. I can make room for her sympathy for him, his infatuation with her but keeping at the frivolous relationship even when the boy started avoiding and ill-treating her had become too much after a point. I remember putting away the book with a few other partially read ones. Then, I thought I may as well suffer it till its end and forget about it than let it stay on my bedside too long.
The narration came across as a strong point till the end. Barbara’s fixation for Sheba came out as a confession much much later. Through the book, it had seemed that Barbara was simply relating incidents as she saw or was being told by Sheba with the sole purpose of writing her diary — it’d felt like a budding book to me – especially when it was referred to as a manuscript while they were at Sheba’s mother’s place.
It was only in the last few paras that Barbara sort of owned up to her fixation and it felt like a psychological issue with her. Believe in the movie, this revelation runs parallel to most of the story.
I haven’t read the book, but from what you say it sounds like the movie is quite differently skewed. For one, it really is predominantly about Barbara and her stalker-like obsession with Sheba. She’s been obsessed with someone else before and the movie ended with her trying to befriend another vulnerable woman.
Sheba was just as irritating a character as you say. What was she, thick in the head? An affair with a 15-year-old was a crime, not just stupidity. However, Sheba and the kid weren’t at all obsessed with one another and didn’t seem to have any depth to their relationship from the beginning. It was about one thing alone. So, it shouldn’t have been that difficult for to end it when she found she was being blackmailed, but she didn’t. They passed it off as an obsession with younger men or boys, but that didn’t come through in the movie.
I really think it’s the acting that carries it through – specially from the incredible Judi Dench.
I read the book ages ago, and only watched the film more recently. I found the story in the book a lot stronger than the film, Sheba seemed a bit darker and there was more balance in her relationship with Barbara, which then suddenly shifted towards the end.
I suspect I’m increasing my positive memory of the book by superimposing my memory of the acting in the film over it slightly because as I say it’s been a long time!
The bit I found hardest to fathom in the film was the relationship between Sheba and the boy. I mean why would anyone find a teenage boy attractive? Even most teenage girls are not keen!! I thought that was the least convincing part of the film, they really didn’t have a believable bond, for me anyway. It worked a little better in the book.
Apart from that the acting is incredible, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench did a great job.
Yes! And if he was an unusual teenager, it should have come across, both in the book and movie. Steven was completely and utterly ordinary and in the movie had barely any charisma. There’s very little incentive to fall in love with the dude, specially when there’s so much at stake. And then, to get blackmailed for it and still not be able to stop… Implausible.