The new film Notes on a Scandal (starring Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench) revolves around a student/teacher affair framed by a lesbian subtext. And, this British film doesn’t employ much more than this premise and two amazing actresses masterfully executing their craft to fill the hour and change. You really you won’t need much more to be glued to your seat anyway.

Dench is eerily enticing as Barbara, a spinster school marm, who records the details of her lonely life in a diary and plans entire weekends “around a trip to the laundrette.” But, it’s her amusingly biting voiceovers that propel the story as she comments on those around her, like the “plumbers and shop assistants, and doubtless the odd terrorist” she’s forced to educate on the daily. Then one day, out of the misty London fog, Sheba, a 30-something bourgeois beauty joins the staff. The two become quick friends with old the woman acting as Sheba’s keen confidant.

Everything’s just as fine as a nice glass of sherry until Steven enters the scene. All sooty eyelashes, demanding height, and sly Scottish accent, he and Sheba enter into a stealth seduction. “Do it again Miss” he says softly as she absentmindedly brushes his hair during an after class art lesson. Of course, he is only 15 years old and of course this is a criminal offence, but the unfolding story is absolutely nothing like the movie-of-the-week droll you’d expect. And, even though the second act falls victim to some melodramatic misfires (in one scene Blanchett echoes Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?), the solid screenplay is highly entertaining and fantastically written. Notes is in the same league as classic psycho-thriller classics like Strangers on a Train and newer fare like The Talented Mr. Ripley.