I think the success of Notes on a Scandal probably depends on how one responds to the following: Cate Blanchett calls Judi Dench a "fucking vampire." To those who find this strange or off-putting, the film will be a flat mess. To those whose response is - as mine was - that it seem like a movie you absolutely must see, the film is, well, a movie that you absolutely must see.

What Notes on a Scandal isn't: a clever, twisty thriller that bores into the heart of the human soul to reveal the corruption and longing inside all of us. What it is: a soap opera about a psychotic closeted lesbian history teacher who blackmails a lovely new arts teacher into being her friend.

Melodrama used to be the dominant genre of Hollywood narratives, but ours is an age of realism, and that vogue leaves one in doubt as to how we should treat a sudsy little pack of nastiness like this one. To argue - as I've seen it done - that the film is unsuccessful because Dench's Barbara Covett doesn't go through a persuasive character arc is surely to miss a point somewhere. And to say "oh, but it's a melodrama!" is simply laziness personified. There aren't melodramas, and it's a pretty significant choice for somebody to go out and make one these days. On the whole, however, I have to admit that I'm content to punt these questions, and revel in the movie's delightfully trashy craftsmanship.

The now-forgotten critic Joseph Kerman once dismissed the opera Tosca as a "shabby little shocker," by which he meant to indict its lurid plot of sex and murder as beneath the attention of serious people.* I have long made it one of my projects in life to reclaim this phrase for good, and not just because I love Tosca; rather, it's because I've never entirely understood what part of "shabby little shocker" is supposed to be insulting. To me, it's a way of saying that a story has been crafted without much finesse or any ambition other than to provoke its audience into emotional excitation. Thus I mean it as highest praise when I say: Notes on a Scandal is a shabby little shocker.

This is largely for two reasons, and they are named Judi and Cate. I, like everyone else in the anglophone world, had long since grown tired of the alarming frequency with which Dench turns out Oscar-nominated turns as a tart but lovable old woman, even while I recognised that in the technical sense of the words, she is a great actress. How wonderful to be able to say that this is the Dench performance we've been waiting for, that throws the windows open and lets light into the musty old rooms of the dame's multitudinous laurels. It turns out that all she needed to do was play a villain, all along. And not a boring old "cranky old person with needs" type villain. There is literally not one shred of decency to Barbara, not even her loving relationship with her cat. She is Ee-vil, and Dench devours her whole. And it's all very subtle and nuanced, is the best part, with the tiniest gestures contributing to the complete portrait. Sans makeup, and with a facial expression that never veers away from a squinty glare, Dench manages to make Barbara a rounded character anyways: 360 degrees of bile. It's marvelous fun, if you like that sort of thing.

Blanchett spends most of the film in her costar's shadow, but like in any good opera, that's only because her showstopping moment comes in the final act. I'll not spoil it any more than the ad campaigns already have, which is to say that you already know how the fucking thing ends, but let us say that Blanchett chews the scenery with gusto. Her character is not so full as Dench; but it is not any less showy and delightfully impossible for it.

There's a third character worth talking about, which is the Philip Glass music. God knows I love him, but there's a certain sameness to his film scores (barring the -qatsi cycle, I hasten to add). That's kind of the case in Notes, but I can't help but feel that he uses a slightly fuller orchestra here than is typical. At any rate, it works because it is extremely broad and dramatic, and kind of loopy, if it's at all fair to call Philip Glass "loopy." It is an operatic score, in short, and if gives off the flavor of third-rate Wagner, that's okay, because the plot basically just third-rate Puccini. That doesn't sound like a compliment, but it's not really a criticism.

The script, by the under-appreciated playwright Patrick Marber doesn't do much besides provide overbaked lines for the actors to roll around in their mouths; Richard Eyre does little in the way of directing other than staying out of the way of the actors. I mean, there's not much to it, in any meaningful sense. It's not an incompetent movie. It's not an imaginative movie. It's a very fun movie, anchored by two actresses slumming the hell out of it. "Fucking vampire." Sometimes I wonder if it's fair that we demand more out of our cinema than that.

6/10