NOTES ON NOTES
Illustration by Ryan Thomas
Scandalous.
Are there any words so universally thrilling that they cause equal flutters in the loins of teenagers, teachers and aged thespian uncles? Revisiting Venus and Notes on a Scandal on DVD confirmed to me that there is such a word. Brace yourselves, it’s ‘cunt’. Unfortunately, the effect of ‘cunt’ on anyone below the age of a teenager can be unpredictable, as documented in Atonement, so delicately considered use seems to be British cinema’s current guideline to the novice seducer.
Unlike that of Atonement, the plots of Venus and NOAS don’t rely on the appearance of this divisive word and although its use in both films as a wooing tool convinced me, I also suspect that there was some striving for blue kudos about this – perhaps the writers wanted a boost of that ill-defined but apparently desirable quality, Edginess? This is an alarming possibility for anyone out there on the edge already. Integrating Richard Griffiths, Vanessa Redgrave and Leslie Phillips into the bands of ketamine testers and cabaret stencilists who patrol the cultural hinterlands won’t be smooth. Ignoring the question of space, morale’s going to take a pummelling.
If edginess did preoccupy the NOAS scriptwriters then I applaud their efforts to defy the centripetal casting of Julia Mckenzie as Judi Dench’s sister. For me, this combination was a recipe for distraction – dragging me back to a time when Dench and McKenzie steeped British TV comedy in a syrup of domestic middlingness. Dench had her Fine Romance whilst McKenzie ruled ITV with Fresh Fields. This lasted 29 episodes before mutating into French Fields, in which the show’s central conceit (Housewife in Argonautian quest for hobby) was reinvigorated with the help of a stunt baguette. I loved all this at the time but I’d rather not be reminded in the middle of a film.
Watching NOAS on DVD didn’t make the final scene less perplexing either. Dench’s character approaches a female stranger by that bench in Primrose Hill. The action is accompanied by nervy, Hannibal Lecter rising strings. But why? In a slasher film a last glimpse of the anti-hero eyeing another victim makes sense – we see they’re still out there and we go home jumpy. Plus we’re all set up for the sequel. But do people really come away from a film trembling at the prospect of being spitefully diarised or blackmailed by a lesbian colleague? Some people obviously, but surely they get their own films. Perhaps it is a set-up for a sequel – McKenzie and Dench break June Whitfield out of a home and go on a willowy-blonde-discrediting spree. That’s an idea, now we just need to make it edgier.
CJ Magnet