Once Naomi enters the seminary, whose sympathetic headmistress shares her dream but advises patience, "The Secrets" steadily metamorphoses into a romantic tearjerker.
Jean S. Harris, the private-school headmistress whose 1981 trial for the murder of a prominent Scarsdale, N.Y., physician galvanized a nation with its story of vengeance by a woman scorned, died on Sunday at an assisted-living center in New Haven.
Conducting this symphony of high diction is Lynn Redgrave as the school's embattled headmistress, whose grimacing upper-crustiness seems to have been learned from studying the accents of the millionaire and his wife on "Gilligan's Island".
But the school Sara attends is still Miss Minchin's, whose harridan of a headmistress tolerates Sara, her father's "little princess," only as long as the Crewe fortune lasts.
Dahl's 1988 novel tells the story of Matilda Wormwood, an extraordinary child whose disinterested parents and malicious headmistress are contemptuous of her intelligence and completely unaware of her supernatural talents.
Chris King, taking over as chair of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC), whose members include Eton and Westminster, defends private schools as "the only truly independent schools" in contrast to state-run schools.
Miss Honey is under the meaty thumb of the Trunchbull, the headmistress of a school whose motto is "Bambinatum est maggitum" ("Children are maggots").
The archvillain is eagle-eyed, tight-lipped Sister Assumpta Jodie Fosterr), the school's headmistress and math teacher, whose prosthetic leg has earned her the nasty nickname Peg-Leg.
There's a lot of hot girls in tights because they look good and if you want to try to deny that you're a fucking idiot (do you really want to see girls in sweatpants? thought so), but besides that you'll get some serious interviews with people whose clothing will get your hand rapped by the headmistress at a store you're too scared to walk into.
The trial provided the fascination of a love triangle involving the cultivated headmistress of an exclusive girls' school, a wealthy cardiologist whose book, "The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet," had been a best seller, and an attractive younger rival for his affection.
