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 enlarge | Director: Richard Eyre
Actors: Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Tom Georgeson, Michael Maloney, Joanna Scanlan
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy Used: $1.19
You Save: $18.79 (94%)
New (62) Used (88) from $1.19
Rating:  160 reviews
Sales Rank: 4153
Format: Ac-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 92 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: FOXD2243898D
UPC: 024543438915
EAN: 0024543438915
ASIN: B000NIVJFY
Theatrical Release Date: 2006
Release Date: April 17, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: PLEASE READ: DVD is in a white sleeve - NO INSERT AND NO CASE. DVD has been professionally resurfaced. Ships first class.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 26-30 of 160
Satisfying Psychological Thriller January 5, 2008
ImpatientReader.com (the West)
Welcome to the claustrophobic world of a crummy vocational school in the British working-class, inner-city. Barbara (Judi Dench) is a hardened, long-term instructor who rules her classroom with an iron fist. Sheba (Cate Blanchett) is a newly hired art student who finds herself in over-her-head when a couple of her gangly, adult-sized male students get in a fist-fight in her class.
Barbara breaks it up and Sheba, feeling grateful for the intervention, initiates a friendship. But Barbara is more than she seems: flinty and abrasive, she lives alone with her beloved cat and keeps obsessive journals filled with caustic observations of her coworkers. Soon her journals take on the distinctly desperate tone of pent-up desire and unrequited love as she writes on and on about Sheba.
Poor Sheba has no idea. She welcomes Barbara into her unconventional household where she and her much older husband are attempting to raise their very dependent Down's Syndrome son. If Barbara is flinty and calculating, then Sheba seems on the verge of flying to pieces. Cate Blanchett, in an equally good performance, keeps Sheba breathless, overwhelmed, and distracted much of the time.
But then Sheba stumbles impulsively into a compromising situation with a beautiful, but underage, male student. Barbara finds out about it and realizes that she has all the leverage she needs to blackmail Sheba: not that she wants to do it because she'd rather have power over Sheba to keep the attractive art teacher under her thumb.
This is not a masterpiece; it is good, however. Very British, gritty, and psychological. Fans of either actress will especially enjoy it (though it is funny to see Cate Blanchett towering about 7 inches taller than Judi Dench!)
 Great performances in a twisted tale December 31, 2007
Carol H. Olson (Riverwash, WI)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Blanchett is graceful, beguiling, baffling in her foolish choices. Dench is a lonely and pathetic monster. Both give astonishing performances in this compelling and gripping film. It's a study in contrasts, of heartbreaking human emotions, lies, secrets, missteps, deception, dire consequences and torment. One cannot allow the few instances of raw language to deter their seeing this great work.
It's riveting, fascinating, endlessly, intensely, sorrowfully human.
A BloodlessThriller December 29, 2007
Dog Res Q.R. (Reno, NV, usa)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I watched this movie only because there nothing else on TV I hadn't seen. I was expecting a droll, staid, slow-moving Brit-ish waste of a couple of hours. Wow! Was I surprised.
Since everyone else has synopsized this movie, I would just like to thank the director and producers for such deep characterizations. First Barbara. Us of a certain age who went to school in the 50's and 60s had at least one Barbara! And Judy Dench captured her perfectly. Like most of our female teachers who never married career choices were teacher, nurse, librarian. They start out idealizing teaching, but come to realize it was not a life choice and by the end of their careers they hated teaching AND the students. I had flashbacks of several teachers while watching.
Dench's hatred for her own imperfection is mirrored in her contempt for Sheba's highly imperfect family, going so far as to regard the Down Syndrome son as the "court jester" and that Sheba would be better off without any of them. I have watched this movie twice and will watch it even more times as it is one of those gems where you see even more character development the more times you watch it....like "Muriel's Wedding" for one. I immediately ordered the book today from Amazon.
Good but not great December 23, 2007
A.S.I (Maryland, USA & Lagos, Nigeria)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The good thing about this movie it exposes the forbidden and illegal teacher-student affair from the female teacher's point of view. Men seem to be getting the worst of it in the media.
This psychological thriller centers on attractive, rich, new high school teacher, Sheba Hart who also has an excellent home life but who falls for the seductions of and has an affair with an equally attractive 15 year old student; Steven Connolly played by Andrew Simpson.
Judi Dench plays Barbara, a veteran, sinister lonely teacher at the same school who witnesses the affair and tries to sort of 'blackmail' Sheba but in a different way.
This different form of blackmail and it's consequences are what the movie is based on so I wont spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it by discussing it.
The acting is top-notch and the cast is stellar.You wont get any better, but my problem with this movie is that all it's ends are loose especially with Barbara. There are no explanations for why events unfolded as they did and therefore there is no closure for the viewer.
Chilling December 23, 2007
Bookphile (USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is yet another example of fine British cinema. What makes it so singular for an American like me is this is a movie that centers around two women, where said two women have most of the screen time, and where the male characters are secondary. It proves in a most masterful way that movies about women can be complex, interesting, and every bit as compelling as movies that center around male characters. And with two such stellar actresses as Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, how could the moviegoer go wrong?
This movie is a really wonderful and intricate character study. Though Blanchett's character sounds like she should be the villain, having violated one of the most sacred trusts the public places in its schools, Dench's character is no less menacing. What is truly astonishing about this film is how Blanchett's character comes out as more sympathetic in the end. What Sheba does is abhorrent but it is also horrifying to watch how Barbara tries her best to catch Sheba in her net. Though Sheba's actions are morally repugnant, she is not without a conscience and she knows that what she has done is wrong and that it will tear her family, her school, and her young lover's life apart. Barbara, on the other hand, is a textbook sociopath. Though initially enraged over discovering Sheba's affair, she decides to use it to her advantage so that she can back Sheba into a corner. Barbara doesn't care about the student and she doesn't really care about Sheba either. All she cares about is winning her prize. She is a ruthless predator.
Blanchett is fantastic as Sheba. She makes the character three dimensional so that the viewer can understand what has driven her to commit such a heinous act, though her reasons for it do not in any way excuse her actions. Still, it is really an experience to watch a film and see a villain who is multi-faceted and who reminds the viewer that all humans are fallible. She is a woman with a sickness, a woman who is deeply disturbed and who sets into motion a chain of events that she hasn't the least idea how to stop. Watching her life unravel is visceral and though she deserves to be punished it is still alarming to watch her walk right into the trap Barbara has set for her.
As for Dench, she is simply incomparable. Barbara is completely without feelings for anyone other than herself and she is incapable of understanding the pain of others. She is like a spider, slowly spinning her web and waiting patiently for her victims to become entrapped within her threads. Every scene that she is in is filled with such creepiness that it sends a shiver down the spine of the viewer. What is worse, she has established a pattern of behavior and suffers no consequences because of it. In this way, the film poses another interesting moral question. That people like Barbara exist is undeniable and that they get away with their actions goes without saying. While society certainly needs to protect itself from those whose crimes are transparent, what about those of someone like Barbara, who quietly set about destroying the lives of others.
Hollywood needs to take a hint from British cinema. If you take a strong story with interesting characters and cast formidable actors in the lead roles, people will not only see the movie, they will absorb it. Since this film is entirely devoid of explosions and high-speed chases, however, I will assume that Hollywood won't be emulating it any time soon. In that case, I will continue to look to the British filmmakers.
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