Pun Salad

A sordid little drama about what happens when you make poor decisions.

There's Cate Blanchett playing Sheba, a new art teacher at an English school where the students are (in the words of the narration) "future plumbers, shop assistants, and doubtless the odd terrorist too."

Yes, the narrator is kind of a lunatic. She's Barbara, a poisonous old repressed lesbian, played by M herself, Dame Judi Densch. She's attracted to Sheba, and clueless Sheba is initially accepting, inviting Barbara to lunch with her family.

But Sheba has her own problems, in addition to being a poor judge of character; she's depressed over her dead-end career, antsy in her saintly existence as wife to her much older husband, and mother to a daughter (surly) and son (Downs syndrome). She finds herself attracted to a 15-year-old boy, and…

Well, what do you think happens? Hint: it's not everybody living happily ever after.

Dame Judi and Cate act up a storm (both got Oscar nominations), but unless you're into watching acting for its own sake—although there's nothing wrong with that—this is pretty melodramatic and predictable, once the plot pieces have been set up. Decent dialogue, especially the Barb-narration, which reveals more to us about Barb than she herself realizes.