In the adult world when a hot teacher like Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) sleeps with her fifteen-year-old student, it's called statutory rape, but in the fifteen-year-old male world, when a boy beds his hot teacher, it's called "Awesome!" Seriously, unless you're this kid's parents, isn't your reaction pretty much like "Dude, score!"

I think this might be the position of the filmmaker, director Richard "Iris" Eyre because he doesn't seem all that concerned with the transgressions of Sheba. He's more interested in the obsession of Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), who's an older, perpetually frowny fellow teacher who's one of those co-workers who thinks she knows it all, is smarter than everyone around her, and hates life to some certain degree for whatever reason. Barbara is what we might call a spinster.

The affair between Sheba and the boy isn't really the moral focus of the film. Instead, Barbara sees an opening for blackmail. Because she's so lonely, she tries to force Sheba into a friendship. Basically, if Sheba is friendly with Barbara, Barbara won't tell the authorities.

Yes, Barbara is a nut. It's hard to tell whether she's a lonely lesbian who's repressed her homosexuality or just a lonely heterosexual for whom the time to covet the weenie has long since passed and female friendships form a far more fulfilling role. I'm not clear on that. I don't really care either. I think the filmmaker wants the dumber members of his audience to argue about whether she's a lesbian or not when the issue is in fact loneliness.

Quite honestly, this is a horror film. It's kind of like at work where there's that one person who just won't stop talking to you when it's clear you'd just like to get back to work. Barbara is that person after about 10 cups of coffee. You know, if you haven't slept with somebody who's underage and Barb is after you, you just tell old Barb to screw off. Unfortunately, Sheba doesn't have that choice and it eventually becomes a matter of which is worse: taking responsibility for her actions or being friends with the wacko lady.

Ultimately, this is just one of those films that posits a situation that seems based on some headline out of Florida. There's one messed up situation piled on top of another. In some world I guess that makes for good drama.