Mister Tee wrote:By the way, assuming Dench gets the best actress nod, that will give her an amazing 6 nominations in her first 10 years as an Oscar hopeful. The only comparison I can quickly come up with is Davis and Streep's 7-in-first-10, in '35-'44 and '78-87 respectively.
Dench's is a pretty amazing story; She has to be one of the most successful senior citizens in Oscar history.
And I don't know if it's been pointed out, but the nomination this year will be Dench's first nomination that's not for a film from Weinstein's company.
flipp, what you say about Dench's work is absolutely correct. Some out there have compared her character to Glenn Close's in Fatal Attraction, but Close -- despite doing wildly entertaining work -- essentially presented a monster. Though Dench's logic is every bit as twisted as Close's was, you feel her pain/loneliness so fully that, even whle you're horrified by her actions, you can't dismiss her so easily. (And her class position vis a vis Blanchett actually makes me lean vaguely in her direction)
Regarding the lead/supporting dichotomy -- only in retrospect, I've come to think that Raul Julia's failure to secure a well-deserved nod for Kiss of the Spider Woman changed the approach most studios took toward double nominations up top. In years prior, a double-team was not at all uncommon; since, unless I'm forgeting someone, the only case is '91's Thelma and Louise (where it was utterly impossible to choose which one was lead). More to the point, the only one that was tried for and missed was Kidman/Streep in The Hours. In all other cases (Pulp Fiction, Chicago, Brokeback, pick your others) studios emphasized the smallest discrepancies in screen time/focus/fame and campaigned from the beginning to split the competition. I wonder, though: if, instead of this year's unusually solid best actress roster, we were looking at last year's paltry bunch, would Dench/Blanchett be so readily divided?
Another question: if both Dench and Blanchett had not so very recently won Oscars, would each be strongly in the running this year? I haven't seen Hudson yet, but it seems to me Blanchett is doing quite well with critics; had Virginia Madsen won instead in '04, I wonder if the third-nomination-without-a-win would have made Blanchett something of a co-favorite? And Dench, of course, having been pensioned off with that fine-but-pipsqueak-length supporting turn, seems to be nominated without hope year after year.
By the way, assuming Dench gets the best actress nod, that will give her an amazing 6 nominations in her first 10 years as an Oscar hopeful. The only comparison I can quickly come up with is Davis and Streep's 7-in-first-10, in '35-'44 and '78-87 respectively.
Judi Dench has never been more compelling. Just by the nature of her sexuality, Barbara Covett is a screen relative of so many other characters ("crazy old lesbians" portrayed by Judith Anderson, Grayson Hall, etc.), yet I've never seen a character so thoroughly understood and championed by their portrayer. She takes this role and injects such a perfectly tempered amount of vulnerability, sadness, neuroticism, manipulation and downright psychotic tendencies -- it's a very well-rounded character that could've easily devolved into caricature in the hands of a lesser actress. This is truly her best performance to date. After phoning in performances such as Mrs. Henderson Presents, she deliciously dives into this role as if she were born to play it. Along with others here, I have to say that it's my favorite lead performance this year and I wouldn't mind a surprise win for La Dench. Mirren's victory is practically assured at this point, but if anyone could sneak in for an upset, I'd love it to be the other dame in the bunch.
Bill Nighy again turns in a fantastic performance. His "figure it out!" was so utterly believable. Was he waiting for the other shoe to drop the entire time he was married to Sheba?
Blanchett is equally impressive as the target of Barbara's obsession. Her confrontation scene in Barbara's apartment is a stick of dynamite. I can understand campaigning her in the supporting category. It's Barbra's story, she's narrating it, she's writing it. Even in the book, as she keeps reminding the "Diary" that she's telling Sheba's story, the reader knows that we're really seeing a tale of obsession unraveling before us with Barbara at the center. Is it truly a supporting character? Heck no. It's a co-lead, however, within the context of the framework of Heller's story, Sheba Hart joins Jennifer Dodd and the unnamed woman on the bench at the end as supporting insects caught in Barbara's web. "You wanna fuck me, Barbara!" Yikes!
Patrick Marber's script is true to Zoe Heller's source material and full of crispy wit and cynical shards of dialogue and narration.
Edited By flipp525 on 1167680741
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
This movie takes off like a Roman candle, and doesn't quit till the almost abrupt finale I don't know where Richard Eyre's been since making Iris, but I'd guess somewhere learning about pacing. The earlier film was all earnest and slow; this one, while taken seriously, flies along -- so swiftly, you can just about block out the material's innate triviality until it's over.
And, of course, you can watch the performances, which are super. Dench and Blanchett are as much co-leads as, say, MacLaine and Winger in Terms of Endearment, and they almost reach that high standard of achievement. I was irritated by Dench's work in Mrs. Henderson -- it struck me she had a character to play, but opted to coast with familiar Dench-isms instead. Here she dives inventively into a very different role and gives maybe the best performance I've seen from her (I'm with Sabin -- I like Mirren and Winslet alot, but this might be the year's best work by an actress). Blanchett doesn't have the film-dominance Dench does (she misses out on all that nifty narration), but she's just about perfect, anyway, conveying a woman who's had it too easy and lets herself slide in too many ways. The mobbed-by-press scene is, as Sabin says, badly shot, but it's just about the only bum moment in the film. And a word about Bill Nighy: he's splendid throughout, and has a particularly wonderful scene near the front door (too short for a typical Oscar push, but truly memorable).
I can't imagine anyone not getting a kick out of this movie.
Not supporting at all. It looks like we'll have several fine leading performances robbing truly great supporting performances again. Jack, Jennifer, and Cate...get in line with Ethan, Jamie, and well, the list just goes on, doesn't it?
This movie is a hoot. I think it's quite effectively campy, almost perfectly campy. Why? Because the whole shebang occurs right under Richard Eyre's nose. He films this whole thing quite seriously, and it's just a deliciously nasty piece of overheated bad taste. Judi Dench is always so safe on-screen, and here she cuts loose like I've never seen her do so before. Wonderful, wonderful performance. I believe I've seen the five nominees for Best Actress now and she's my pick in a walk. Cate Blanchett is very effective as well. Her HER I AAAAAAAHMM! scene is ludicrously edited, but I can't fault her performance at all. If anybody's going to captivate Judi Dench, it's Cate Blanchett. I expect Bill Nighy to get his first Oscar nomination with three years. The guy is such an underrated commodity. Philip Glass's score is a bit too pulsing, but probably aids immeasurably. And Patrick Marber's screenplay is nicely constructed, and in tune with Dench's delivery.
And this year's annual There's No Way on God's Green Earth It's Supporting Award goes to . . . Cate Blanchett! Good performance? Of course. Supporting? Not on your life. You know, I think it's fine to debate close calls like Jack Nicholson and Jennifer Hudson. But Blanchett? We should not even be having this conversation, she is absolutely a lead. The Academy really needs to do SOMETHING to stop performances like this from hogging the supporting categories. How are people like Phyllis Somerville and Emily Blunt supposed to get nominated in the category that was supposedly created to honor fine work by actors on the margins? Huh? Of course, Blanchett hasn't been nominated yet, but . . .
This movie is absolutely hilarious. I think it would be more offensive if it weren't all so over the top. The dialogue is ridiculous, Philip Glass's score is a thing of absolute pomposity, and Judi Dench eats it all up with a giant spoon, relishing every bitchtastic quip with wicked delight. It's completely trashy and not at all defensible as good cinema . . . but if this is your kind of thing it's still kinda fantastic.
Melinda Lo of the lesbian media site afterellen.com doesn't like it:
Early on in the new film Notes on a Scandal, aging British schoolteacher Barbara Covett (Judi Dench) looks down through a high-school window to watch dozens of young students pouring into the school yard. We see her from the vantage point of someone standing on the ground; her face is small and somewhat obscured by the glass, but the look of disdain on her face is clear.
It is an image that calls to mind the sinister Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, at once trapped inside, yearning to be free, yet dismissive of the outside world. Barbara Covett peering through the window — like Mrs. Danvers, longing for her dead mistress — is symbolic of the madwoman in the attic, a metaphor that has long carried with it the heavy baggage of misogyny, mental illness and sexual repression. Amid these familiar storytelling tropes is the obvious elephant in the room: Barbara Covett is a closeted lesbian.
She is so closeted that even she does not admit to herself that she is a lesbian, although her relatives and her co-workers all seem to know that she is one; indeed, they ask after “Jennifer,” a woman whom Barbara previously presented to her family as her “companion.” But Jennifer, Barbara tells them with studied carelessness, has married and moved away. There is a new woman in Barbara's life: Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett), the school's new art teacher.
Barbara immediately befriends Sheba, who is flighty and girlish and beautiful, and their relationship is never fully believable — until Barbara discovers Sheba having an affair with a 15-year-old male student, and threatens to reveal all to the school authorities. Now, there is a reason for them to be “friends”: Barbara could ruin Sheba at any moment.
The film is based on Zoe Heller's critically acclaimed novel, What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal (2003), which is written entirely from the perspective of Barbara, who keeps journals recording every moment of her relationship with Sheba. Barbara is critical and bitter, and judges everything and everyone she can in the pages of her notebooks.
In the film, Dench translates Barbara's cruelty and neediness from the page and into a grasping, emotionally stunted, withered woman who gazes with obsessive yearning at the young and vibrant Sheba, who is all physical passion and momentary delight. Barbara takes advantage of Sheba's weakness without apparent guilt or remorse.
Her obsession is not based on any real physical passion — she recoils at the accusation, late in the film, that she might desire Sheba sexually — but rather it seems to be based on a deep emotional void. She wants Sheba to fill it, and she won't take no for an answer. This is always the root of the lesbian stalker in film: emotional desire, not necessarily physical. That desire remains unspeakable, thereby underscoring the perversity of lesbianism.
The word “lesbian” itself is never uttered in the film at all, but nearly every other term that suggests deviant female sexuality is employed to describe Barbara. She is called a witch; she is called a vampire. Even worse, she is called a spinster and a virgin — something that is simply pathetic for a woman at her advanced age. In Notes on a Scandal, all of the stereotypical qualities of the psychotic lesbian stalker are laid upon the character of Barbara Covett.
The character of Sheba does not fare much better. She is married to a much older man and has a sexual affair with a teenage student. She is practically the main character in a morality play that warns women to make an appropriate match with a man, or else risk becoming a dried-up old spinster with lesbian stalker tendencies.
But the vast majority of critics who have reviewed Notes on a Scandal — which has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards — lavish praise on the film, completely ignoring the thick thread of sexism and homophobia that binds this thriller together.
Dave Edelstein of New York magazine writes tolerantly, “Anyone who has ever felt possessive about a friend will recognize him- or herself in Barbara Covett's covetousness.” Newsweek says that Barbara is “a deliciously nasty piece of work.” And Time praises Notes on a Scandal as “the perfect antidote to all those warm, forgiving schoolboy dramas we've endured through the years.”
Though several critics acknowledge that Barbara is “a scheming lesbian” (Time) and that the film pulls out “the obsessive lesbian-stalker angle” (Variety), only Kirk Honeycutt of the Hollywood Reporter is clued in to the sexism in the script: “in tone and theme, the film has all the hallmarks of playwright-screenwriter Marber's stark, uncompromising misanthropy, if not misogyny,” he writes.
And perhaps it is not surprising that so far the only review to point out the film's problematic portrait of a lesbian is The Advocate, which notes somewhat mildly, “the role does not in any way fit the notion of a politically correct gay character.”
Political correctness, it is true, is not a hallmark of Notes on a Scandal. But can the skill of Dench and Blanchett — who do deliver excellent performances — excuse the problematic story itself? Is there room for a film in which a stereotypical, psychotic lesbian exists and, in fact, is rendered larger-than-life in all her wicked, shocking glory?
For me, there was nothing “delicious” about Notes on a Scandal. After leaving the screening, I felt distinctly disturbed — and not in a good way. Perhaps I lack a sense of humor. Or perhaps I simply haven't seen enough of this year's earnest, Oscar-chasing films to be able to praise Notes on a Scandal as “a satisfyingly nasty awards-season tonic” (Variety).
Notes on a Scandal was extremely disheartening. One year after Brokeback Mountain brought a gay love story to mainstream audiences, featuring mainstream actors and a mainstream director, where is the lesbian equivalent? We get Notes on a Scandal, starring the Oscar-winning Judi Dench and the Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett. You couldn't ask for a more stellar cast. But the story itself seems to claw its way up from the dusty 1950s and '60s, when films like The Children's Hour underscored the perversity of lesbianism.
When I left the screening room after watching Notes on a Scandal, I thought to myself: I would never, ever, recommend this movie to anyone who has even the slightest difficulty with accepting lesbianism. The problem is this: Notes on a Scandal is very well made. It has the ring of truth that only A-list actors can bring to an art film. It is, in fact, so convincingly professional that most critics can easily overlook the stereotypes embedded in the film, blinded by the glamour of Dench and Blanchett's skillful acting.
But Dench and Blanchett do not excuse the film. Notes on a Scandal is one of the most sexist and homophobic films I have ever seen.
"...it is the weak who are cruel, and...gentleness is only to be expected from the strong." - Leo Reston
"Cruelty might be very human, and it might be cultural, but it's not acceptable." - Jodie Foster
I watched this film the other day and I must say that Judi Dench is amazing in it. She's the neurotic sociopath that you wouldn't expect her to play. Blanchett is also quite good as is Nighy.
It's a solid film and quite involving, but not best picture material, though I would certainly place Dench in my top five for the year so far and Blanchett close to the top 5 if not in it.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
Smirk, smirk. Pretty, slightly ditzy schoolteacher (Cate Blanchett) gets it on with one of her teenage students, and predictable consequences follow. But Notes is not really about age-inappropriate sex or child victimization. The boy involved is always the rather ugly aggressor in this relationship. If there is a victim, it is Blanchett's Sheba, addled by an unhappy marriage, failed artistic ambitions and, soon enough, by another relationship--this one from hell. It is with another teacher, Barbara (Judi Dench), who is their school's battle-ax--cruel disciplinarian, cynical commentator on the hopelessness of its lower-class student body and, yes, a scheming lesbian. Once she discovers Sheba's crime, she attempts to use it to blackmail her. Dench is nothing less than great in this role. It's hard to recall a recent performance of such unrelenting ferocity, such a thoroughgoing devotion to the domination of another life.
Notes on a Scandal is melodrama trying to pass itself off as a slice of realistic life. But director Richard Eyre and screenwriter Patrick Marber keep forcing us past disbelief and into the perverse pleasures of nastiness. If nothing else, their film is the perfect antidote to all those warm, forgiving schoolboy dramas we've endured through the years. This corn is not green; it is rotten down to the last kernel.
"The mantle of spinsterhood was definitely in her shoulders. She was twenty five and looked it."
Judi Dench’s superb performance galvanises Notes On A Scandal, Richard Eyre’s impressive and acutely observed adaptation of the Booker-nominated novel. Probing away relentlessly at such uncomfortable issues as paedophilia, class envy, sexual jealousy and blackmail, it is a film that has the same queasy, claustrophobic feel as such 1960s British films as The Servant or The Killing Of Sister George.
The film is bound to receive critical applause (and potentially awards recognition as well) for Dench and Cate Blanchett, but Notes suffers from a certain generic confusion that may make it tough to market. Early on, as we hear Dench’s voice-over, it appears that this is shaping up as yet another of those well-crafted but stolid literary adaptations that British cinema specialises in. Later on, the hysteria catches hold and the film lurches into the realm of Gothic melodrama.
The challenge for Fox (which releases the film in the US on Christmas Day and in the UK in early 2007) is to try to appeal to two very different groups: the older, upscale audiences, who relish seeing Dench in films like Iris and Ladies In Lavender; and younger cinemagoers who’ll be attracted by the horror elements, tight plotting and whiff of scandal. If both constituencies can be kept happy, box-office should be reasonably brisk.....
.....The two lead actresses work well together. Dench admirably makes us care for a character who is lonely, vulnerable and sexually unfulfilled as well as full of malice. At the same time the spite is still there: think of Bette Davis at her most curdled and cruel in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane or The Nanny and you’ll come close to the essence of what Dench captures here.
Cate Blanchett, a very strong actress, doesn’t at first glance seem natural casting to play such a weak-willed figure as Sheba, but she gives a subtle and ultimately moving performance.
Patrick Marber’s screenplay ensures that the focus on characterisation is combined with satirical bite and real narrative drive. Eyre largely avoids prurience and ensures the film retains humour and pathos, even at its darkest moments. The cleverly observed coda helps it end on a note that is both chilling and surprisingly upbeat - and even offers the remote possibility that Barbara could return.
Technical credits are noteworthy, with the recruitment of Philip Glass as composer an especially astute decision. His heady, atmospheric score, at times reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann’s music for Hitchcock, adds a sense of dramatic scale and tension that a film set against the backdrop of a north London school might not otherwise enjoy.
Veteran cinematographer Chris Menges throws in some eye-catching close-ups of Blanchett at her most luminous while helping give the piece a visual dynamism.
Five years after their sensitive collaboration on "Iris," Richard Eyre guides Judi Dench to another pitch-perfect performance -- make that bitch-perfect -- in "Notes on a Scandal," a deviously entertaining account of one woman's indiscretions as related by a not-so-disinterested third party. If the results suggest a crafty British spin on the Mary Kay Letourneau saga, the riveting interplay between Dench and Cate Blanchett draws blood with every scene, thanks to a precision-honed script and Eyre's equally incisive direction. Dazzling star combo and appreciative reviews will prove especially enticing to older, literate audiences, yielding solid specialized returns for the Fox Searchlight pic.
Zoe Heller's compelling 2003 novel unraveled the sordid tale of a schoolteacher's affair with one of her young pupils, taking the form of a coolly perceptive and bitingly funny diary written by a close friend. The book's subversive achievement was to project the diarist's own gaze back upon herself, turning a salacious tabloid tale into a subtle and revelatory act of confession.
What Heller achieved through tricky literary technique, Eyre and scribe Patrick Marber ("Closer") have inevitably rendered more explicitly, playing up the obsessive lesbian-stalker angle with a discreet nod in the direction of "Fatal Attraction." What makes "Notes on a Scandal" more than just a Lifetime-ready psychothriller -- as well as a satisfyingly nasty awards-season tonic -- is the ruthless economy of its execution from start to finish.
From the outset, Dench's acerbic narration gives voice to the innermost thoughts of London schoolteacher Barbara Covett, a lonely spinster who reserves her bitter judgments of the world solely for her private journal and, by extension, the viewer. A juicy atmosphere of collusion thus established, Barbara begins to take an interest in Sheba Hart (Blanchett), the svelte, good-natured and very attractive woman who has just joined the faculty as an art teacher (and whose name is, not coincidentally, short for Bathsheba).
The two women become friends after Barbara gives the inexperienced Sheba a crash course in student discipline; in turn, Barbara is invited to lunch with Sheba, her significantly older husband Richard (a terrifically boisterous Bill Nighy), moody teenage daughter Polly (Juno Temple) and Down syndrome son Ben (Max Lewis).
With Barbara providing acid commentary on every detail, the film etches a fine-grained portrait of the Harts' bustling bourgeois lifestyle, with Blanchett ably conveying Sheba's love for her family as well as the quiet dissatisfaction of a woman who married too young and began her career too late.
Sheba's discontent becomes clear when Barbara peeks into her classroom after hours and spies the woman in a compromising position with one of her students, working-class Irish youth Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson, unnervingly blurring the line between schoolboy innocence and sexual menace). Plot point reps a departure from the novel that makes Barbara a much more overtly malevolent figure, as the seeds of manipulation hinted at in the book become a full-throttle portrait of emotional blackmail.
Immediately, Barbara confronts Sheba, who, in a series of flashbacks, tearfully confesses the romantic entanglement that began with private tutorial sessions and culminated in messy trysts near the railroad tracks. Realizing the power she wields over her "friend," Barbara agrees to keep the affair a secret, though it's clear from her insinuating, creepily intimate manner that Sheba is still on thin ice.
Bravura sequence reps an impressively cinematic weave and shows an unfussy command of the material, from Marber's intensely focused adaptation -- much of the dialogue lifted from Heller's book, but pared down without losing its bite or character nuances -- to John Bloom and Antonia Van Drimmelen's tight editing and the sinister, weblike repetitions of Philip Glass' score.
But "Notes on a Scandal" is first and foremost an actors' showcase, and Dench rises ferociously to the occasion with her juiciest, most substantial performance since "Iris" and arguably "Mrs. Brown." Using her frumpy, diminutive stature as a weapon, Dench's Barbara invites the viewer (like Sheba) to pity her loneliness, so it registers as a genuine shock when she exposes the borderline-psychotic levels of neediness underneath.
Worlds away from her work in this year's "Babel" and "The Good German," Blanchett convinces utterly as the willowy, self-destructive Sheba. Thesp manages the tricky task of portraying the woman's actions as foolish and reckless while commanding one's sympathy, even understanding.
Eyre's veteran legit experience shows in a few scenes that barely steer clear of histrionics, particularly in the later going. But he doesn't hold back during the inevitable showdown between Dench and Blanchett, who happily pull out all the stops in a climactic scene that could have been even longer. Denouement strikes an abrupt but fitting note of muted creepiness.
Though not a period piece like Eyre's "Iris" and "Stage Beauty," pic's workaday settings have been outfitted with extreme care, from Tim Hatley's costumes to Caroline Smith's sets. Chris Menges' vibrant lensing generates a palpable heat, perfectly in keeping with the emotions roiling beneath this superbly executed thriller.
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Notes on a Scandal
By Kirk Honeycutt
Hollywood Reporter
Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench co-star in this tale of a foolish affair between a married female schoolteacher and a 15-year-old male student.
This may run counter of the auteur theory, but "Notes on a Scandal" feels much more like a film by writer Patrick Marber than by director Richard Eyre. Eyre does a fine job overseeing performances by a terrific cast that rings true until female hysteria takes over the final act. But in tone and theme, the film has all the hallmarks of playwright-screenwriter Marber's stark, uncompromising misanthropy, if not misogyny.
That would mean neurotic women daring to experiment with unconventional if not outlaw sexual relationships ("Asylum") and the depiction of love as tawdry acts of betrayal and exploitation ("Closer"). While "Scandal" is indeed based on a novel by another writer, Zoe Heller's "What Was She Thinking: Notes on a Scandal," Marber never bothers to import into his screen version any of the wit or subtlety that so pleased its literary critics. Instead, he goes for a dispiriting hard-heartedness.
To whom will such a film appeal? To misanthropes perhaps? Perhaps lonely, bitter folks with no Christmas bird to share with friends or family. Remarkably, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench almost make sense of these extreme characters. Possibly enough enthusiasts of these fine actresses may turn out to deliver a modest art house boxoffice for Fox Searchlight.
The story tells of a scandal provoked by a colossally foolish affair between a married female schoolteacher and a 15-year-old male student. The arrival of art teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett) at a comprehensive high school in north London catches everyone off guard. Her slightly bohemian manner and oddly out-of-fashion attire furrows the brows of fellow teachers and provokes sex-crazed male students. One student, Steven Connolly (Andrew Simpson), pursues her with great ardor. He has about him just enough modest artistic talent and a whiff of poverty within an abusive household to provoke her unhealthy interest.
Sheba appears to have a content home life with a lawyer husband several years her senior (Bill Nighy), a teen daughter (Juno Temple) at a difficult age and a cheerful son (Max Lewis) with Down syndrome. Perhaps that contentment comes from this being a household of "semiprofessional drinkers."
But none of these characters narrate the story. That tasks falls to diarist Barbara Covett (Dench), a history teacher nearing retirement who describes herself as a "battle-ax." Barbara takes the novice teacher under her wing. When she discovers the affair, she acts as mother confessor. When it becomes public knowledge, she acts as Sheba's only defender.
However, she proves both an unreliable narrator and friend. She sees Sheba's dilemma as a personal opportunity to gain the upper hand in the relationship. Marber's screen adaptation makes it clear that Barbara's friendship with and defense of Sheba springs from a strong Sapphic impulse.
Barbara believes the affair puts this good-looking woman in her power. When that power fails her, when Sheba shows insufficient compassion for her dying cat -- a cat, for Pete's sake -- Barbara makes certain rumors will spread, thereby destroying Sheba's life and family. From this point on, female hysteria reigns, egged on by an unusually emotional Philip Glass score.
For a while, two of the finest actresses in cinema make these characters believable. Nothing they do in the final act, however, retains this credibility. Nighy certainly earns our sympathy, though we don't really get to know the man. The youngsters are more props than flesh-and-blood characters, more like Barbara's cat, in fact.
On the plus side, the film nicely surveys the scruffy, genteel sections of contemporary London thanks to excellent design by Tim Hatley and cinematography by Chris Menges.
Anyway, I didn't get any sense of homophobia from the film. It's an honest portrayal of obsession.