Armed with one of the most literate and deviously subtle scripts of 2006, Richard Eyre directs Judi Dench (who worked with him in Iris) and Cate Blanchett in the year's most dynamic acting vehicle--the "for art house aficionados only" Notes on a Scandal. Screenwriter Patrick Marber transforms Zoe Heller's 2003 novel, revealing a schoolteacher's sordid affair with a young student through the diary of a close friend, into a more explicit self-revelatory study of the diarist.

The cynical nature of the source material render Dench's acerbic off screen narration effective. Playing lonely spinster "battle-axe" London schoolteacher Barbara Covett, Dench shares her innermost thoughts only with her diary (and us). Gazing from her favorite city lookout, she muses: "People have always trusted me with their secrets--but who do I trust with mine? You, only you."

A thirty year veteran at a lower class school, Covett judgmentally describes the opening of a new term as the new "pubescent problems" file in--the future plumbers, handymen, and terrorists. She holds disdain for nearly all humanity, tagging one colleague as “limp little Brian” and another as "fatty Hodges," but she finds it hard to read the "wispy" new art teacher Sheba Hart (Blanchett), wondering if she is "a sphinx or simply stupid." Clearly intrigued, she notices how everyone gravitates to Hart and seems particularly irked when Hodges (Joanna Scanlan) lunches with the newcomer, describing the encounter as "the blonde and the pig in knickers."

With the headmaster spouting the current educational philosophy of "reform through nurture," Hart would seem to well suited for the school, but she will give too much of her "heart." Covett's namesake is telling as well, as we learn her secret desires to “own” Hart as a lifelong companion. Very much into "control," evidenced outwardly by her teaching style that demands absolute complicity, we can imagine the eventual fury that must be unleashed once her repressed lesbian love is rejected. Additional clues can be discerned through Dench's eyes--savage sparks occasionally flickering beneath her outward kindly old lonely soul persona.

Covett silently stalks her prey, opportunistically assisting Hart when a fight breaks out in the art teacher's room. When the grateful younger teacher extends a dinner invite, Covett transforms into a restrained (but internally giddy) "teen" prepping for a Prom date. After meeting Sheba's surprisingly older husband (Bill Nighy as Richard Hart) and begrudgingly tolerating their teen daughter and Down Syndrome son, Covett only treasures the post-dinner private time with Sheba, who pours out her life story to her. It's a literal "gold star day" for the old spinster--a fresh conquest with a kindred spirit.

Covett cultivates the friendship, revealing the gentler side buried beneath her tough exterior, but eventually discovers Hart's forbidden love affair. Initial rage erupts from Dench's eyes, but how does she handle this? Legally she is bound to report to the authorities, but Covett instead sees opportunity rising from this "betrayal." She turns to blackmail to achieve a lasting prize, but complications inevitably arise.

Unfolding under Phillip Glass' relentless pulsating score, the provocative narrative paints nuances not granted from tabloids sketching in shocking teacher-student sex scandals. Hart's character is drawn with enough complexity to allow sympathy as she is manipulated by more than one person with hidden agendas, and Covett's turn to darker sides evolves naturally with intelligence and wit.

But above all, Notes on a Scandal stands above the fray for its acting. Both Nighy (as the cuckolded husband) and Andrew Simpson (as the 15 year old lover) effectively run the gamut of emotions their supporting roles require; however, the film belongs to its two female stars. Both Academy Award winners in supporting roles, they play off each other as intensely, harmoniously, and in control as Glass' effective score. Dench ranges from melancholy loneliness to quiet joy to empty pain to malevolent envy and vengefulness while Blanchett transforms from bored bourgeois mother and timorous teacher to beguiling charmer to conflicted schoolgirl to desperate housewife to righteous rampage. It's an acting tour de force destined to stand up over the years as one of the best acting vehicles of 2006.