“Notes on a Scandal,” August 17, 2007, DVD. This is a remarkably well-acted, very tense, painful film about two terribly lonely women teaching at a municipal secondary school in England. Judy Dench (Oscar nomination) plays Barbara, a cold, bitter, and vicious history teacher (what else!) who lives primarily via her journal, which she keeps religiously. She’s positively Victorian (or even Regency) in her language. She develops an obsession for Sheba (Kate Blanchett) a married middle-class new teacher (art, of course) who has an affair with a 15-yo male student. The language and acting are wonderful, and both women are superb as lonely mom (a loving much older husband, adolescent daughter, and Downs Syndrome-son) and spinster, respectively. The former feels entitled to some sort of fling while the latter is starved for affection. She refuses to acknowledge her own lesbian feelings, writing of Sheba as though the two of them are 19th-c upper-middle-class best friends and trusting confidants. Very good, very well written and very painful.