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| Dance With a Stranger |
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  (8/10)
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Runtime: 102 |
| Public Rating: 10.00 (1 votes) |
Director: Mike Newell |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama |
Year: 1985 |
| Writer(s): Shelagh Delaney |
| Reviewed by: Goatdog |
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This is the true story of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Great Britain. Miranda Richardson, in her first performance, deserved some kind of award for her stunning performance. The always dependable Ian Holm is outstanding as her long-suffering admirer Desmond Cussen. The brilliant Rupert Everett, who unfortunately will be remembered as the gay guy from "My Best Friend's Wedding" instead of any of his other wonderful films, plays David Blakely, the dashing young aristocrat who falls in love with the working-class hostess Ellis. Young Matthew Carroll plays Ellis' son, who later committed suicide. As soon as their eyes met across a smoky bar, both Ellis and Blakely were doomed. The pair quickly developed a love-hate relationship, as Blakely's obsession with the platinum blonde waitress at first frightened her. Inevitably, as the idea of settling down with someone so far beneath his station (an interpretation reinforced by his stuck-up friends) seemed more intolerable, the young aristocrat increasingly used Ellis as a kind of service station, ignoring the fact that she was quickly becoming as obsessed as he once was. His mercurial nature, changing quickly from despondent and lovesick to abusive, led to her losing her job, and she took advantage of her stoic admirer Desmond Cussen, who paid for boarding school for her son just so he could have the pleasure of her company once in a while. Blakely's treatment changed inexorably from a kind of benign neglect to a conscious avoidance of her, especially after she gets pregnant and subsequently miscarries. When she had all she could take, she had the faithful Cussen drive her to a bar where Blakely was, and emptied a gun into him when he emerged. Ellis' case took all of 95 days between Blakely's death and her hanging. There are some who think that the usual media storm that accompanied such events, but was absent in this case due to a newspaper strike, would have saved the woman's life. The film brilliantly exposes the dark underside of the supposedly happy and benign decade of the 1950s.
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