But the department's searing portrait of academic abuse aroused skepticism among many educators.

Captured in a searing portrait by Helen Mirren, she is a restless, edgy woman.

Mr. Daly provided a searing portrait of David Koresh in the television movie "In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco."

Cliff sees it as a searing portrait of a film star who, hanging around too long, "is up there selling with nothing left to sell."

The finished 50-minute video was a searing portrait of the rage and pain lurking behind the facade of a seemingly all-American family overseen by a profoundly disturbed mother and an ineffectual father.

She gazes stolidly out on funny and terrible events, including a searing portrait of a girl learning to hate her newly recognized black self.

What begins as a lighthearted romance turns into a searing portrait of greed and privilege, treachery and ignorance.

"Skylight," David Hare's searing portrait of a failed love affair, won for best play.

Inspired by Ms. Vincent's divorce, this piece has been described as a portrait of grief, both searing and funny.

Last year The New York Times's Michiko Kakutani called this first novel "a searing portrait of the consequences of moral laziness and self-absorption."