Scandal Reviews

Michael Caton-Jones's SCANDAL peeks under the bedsheets of Britain's ruling class with a rehashing of the Profumo Affair, the early 60s sex scandal that eventually toppled the Conservative Party from power. Minister of War John Profumo (Ian McKellan) is romantically linked to accused prostitute Christine Keeler (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer), who, as it happened, was also involved with Soviet attache Eugene Ivanov (Jeroen Krabbe), an alleged spy. Keeler met both men through Dr. Stephen Ward (John Hurt), a high-society osteopath. Meanwhile, teenage beauty Mandy Rice-Davies (Bridget Fonda), another Ward protegee, was bedhopping with the high and mighty of two continents, and the whole crew were reported to be frequent participants at extravagant orgies. Instead of sleaze, director Caton-Jones and screenwriter Michael Thomas deliver a vindication of the affair's chief scapegoats--Ward and Keeler--in the form of a two-hour nostalgia trip (complete with imitation Beatles), with some complex and powerful performances. The screen is filled with memorabilia of 1960s London: miniskirts, smoke-filled dens of West Indians, rows of tenements, opportunistic newsmen from tabloids. Overall, however, the direction is uninspired. One problem with SCANDAL is that, compared to scandals of the 80s, the Profumo affair is rather tame. If it's a poke at England's Conservatives you're looking for, the honest fiction of Mike Leigh's HIGH HOPES did more to make them bleed than the pointless fact of SCANDAL.