ongoing

Dame Judi Dench pulled off a Best Supporting Actress nod for her performance as the embittered old crow of a schoolteacher she plays in "Notes on a Scandal." And shouldn't she? God, what a delicious character! Dench is Barbara, a repressed, duplicitous, aged lesbian who gleefully snares the younger teacher Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett, in a trap of Blanchett's making. She's a queen of machinations. Sheba, a former punk fan headed toward middle age and mired in a dead-end marriage to an older man, falls for a 15-year-old male student and has more than a few illicit trysts with him. (Yes, the plotline seems ripped from the headlines a la "Law and Order.") When Barbara, a self-described "battle axe," discovers one said tryst, she realizes she's got great material for blackmail. And maybe ... love? Well, Barbara is sharp-tongued, smart and scheming, but rather dim when it comes to courtship. Some of the action she relates in a voice-over - the "notes" she's keeping in her diary. This is an English "Fatal Attraction" without the ... no that would give it away. Let's say, that the only animal that dies is Barbara's cat, Portia. (Barbara's lone redeeming quality is her love for that cat, which she must put down. Sheba's refusal to accompany her on that journey is the spark for the confrontations and conflicts.) The tension is palpable, Philip Glass's music is often bombastic and Hitchcock-ian (Alfred not Robyn), and the relationships - all of them, really - are frayed. It's based on a novel by Zoe Heller and directed by Richard Eyre of "Closer" fame. (Trivia: Both Blanchett and Dench have played Queen Elizabeth in films. Punk connections: Sheba's teenage daughter sports a CBGB t-shirt early on, and Sheba references her those-were-the-days moments with a Siouxsie & the Banshees album photo and their song "Dizzy" plays in the background.) At the West Newton Cinema at 8:50. Tickets: $9.

1296 Washtington St., Newton, 617-964-8074