Sheba, on the other hand, is a vulnerable, idealistic innocent, thinking she can change things by her sincerity. Gradually, we discover that Barbara is drawn to Sheba by sexual desires she cannot face, for envious social reasons she consciously rejects and as a way of assuaging her loneliness. The novelist and the moviemakers signal this somewhat blatantly through the names Covett and Hart, and, almost as if he were in a Restoration comedy, there's a teacher called Rumer.
The movie centers on acts of transgression, betrayal and bad faith, involving not only Barbara and Sheba, but Sheba's husband, Richard, the headmaster, a teacher smitten by Sheba and the 15-year-old lover. Everyone believes their motives are honest, but all are involved in forms of self-deception. There are brilliantly handled scenes of anger, embarrassment and humiliation, and brutal physical and emotional confrontations of great power.
The teachers are a trifle caricatured, but the four central actors bring depth and subtlety to their roles. In a magnificently un-self-regarding performance, Dench brings to Barbara that chilly aloofness combined with a desperate desire to reach out for comfort and warmth that informed her Queen Victoria in Mrs. Brown and Iris Murdoch in Iris.
Richard Eyre, who directed Iris, has done nothing as good as this since his remarkable movie debut with The Ploughman's Lunch back in 1983. Chris Menges, cinematographer on some of the finest movies of our time, ranging from Kes to The Mission, has done a beautiful job of showing how suburban London looks and feels today. My only real doubts concern Philip Glass's hectic, overemphatic music.
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