Thoughts on Dance with a Stranger

via IMDB

*Ruth Ellis (Miranda Richardson) has met her estranged lover David Blakeley (Rupert Everett) on a foggy evening.*

"How did you get here?"

"I followed your scent."

"Did you drive?"

*He shakes his head head yes.*

"Huh. That drunk."

"Oh, who cares? Everybody's as blind as you are in this weather."

"I wouldn't have come out here if I'd known it was for this."

"You know exactly why you came out, Mrs. Ellis."

Dance with a Stranger, directed by Mike Newell and written by Shelagh Delaney, is a harrowing movie. It pulls no punches about the caustic effects of Britain's class system and the alternating self-destructive, terrifying and enabling behavior of Ruth, David and Desmond (Ian Holm). A love triangle plays out among three damaged people, two of them paying for it with their lives.

Ruth Ellis is the last woman to have been hanged in the United Kingdom. Long before she fatally shoots David and seals her fate, one gets the impression of Ruth being suffocated by the world she lives in. She's just classy enough to be out of place at the nightclub she works in ("The toffs like a bit of spit and sawdust," Ruth's told) but not enough to be accepted by David's circle. The movie's most heartbreaking scenes include Ruth waiting in vain outside a pub for Mrs. Blakely's invitation to come inside, followed by her rejecting David's offer to see inside the family home. Miranda Richardson made her movie debut with Stranger, and what a debut it was.

*Ruth tries to leave David.*

"Don't walk away from me when I'm talking to you."

"Would you like to hit me again?"

"You asked for it."

"Yeah, and I damn well get it, don't I? ... I keep hoping you'll change and you never do."

"I can't help it."

*The pair are silent, until Ruth hands David a jewelry box containing a golden race car key chain.*

"A good luck charm."

*David lowers Ruth's shawl and spreads it to reveal she has on a cross necklace.*

"You're still wearing yours."

"It's to protect me. Against devils and vampires."

Roger Ebert's review observed that the filmmakers kept their focus on the patterns of attraction and repulsion. After a certain point, it becomes that if Ruth is in love with (or rather, especially dependent on) David, he's not in love with (or dependent on) her, and vice-versa. If Desmond is in love with Ruth, that's when she's more apt to think of him as a friend. They all seem to care about Ruth's son, Andy* (Matthew Carroll). David and Desmond's relationship appears to be that of casual acquaintances who end up in a not-quite rivalry. Holm is often as heartbreaking as Richardson in depicting Desmond's unrequited love. I just wish I had a better idea of where Desmond fit into society. It looks like there's nothing, other than her disinterest, to prevent him from pursuing Ruth. 

*The movie's postscript reveals he died of suicide in 1982. Desmond Cussen, if he's alive, would turn 97 in 2020.

In the end, of course, Ruth, David and Desmond all would have been better off if they hadn't gotten involved with each other. Heartache existed from the get-go, won in the end and was never far away.

*David and Ruth enter an alley. As she's up against the wall, Ruth tries to look away from David.*

:I can't see your face."

"I don't want to be seen."

*The embracing begins and the camera pulls back. Seen or unseen, it's an inevitable hookup.*

Recommended.

Thoughts:

-- Box Office: Made for under $2 million, this grossed over $2.1 million in the states (according to Box Office Mojo) and over $1.1 million in Britain. In America, it came in at No. 137 for 1985.

-- Critic's Corner: "A beautifully acted cat-and-mouse story," Vincent Canby wrote. Richardson "makes her smashing film debut." "She can't stop acting," Pauline Kael wrote, "even when a viewer is begging her to, hoping for a glimpse of something besides white-knuckled control."

-- Awards Watch: Richardson won Best Actress from the Evening Standard British Film Awards and the movie itself won the Award of the Youth for foreign films at Cannes.

-- Different Times: David convinces Andy not to take his teddy bear to boarding school, but says nothing about his golliwog doll.

-- Memorable Music: The score is 7-6 in favor of songs not written for movies. "Would You Dance With a Stranger," originally by Peggy Lee, was sung here by Miranda and covered by Mari Wilson. Anyway, I'd hardly call Miranda as sounding "like a cockatoo in a cleft palate."

-- "I'm going to sleep." *Ruth grabs at David.* "Not in my bed, you're not! You get out of here and you don't come back." *David grabs Ruth's wrists and after a brief struggle, she falls down a few stars* "You always say that! ... All of you. ... Whether you like it or not, I always stay."

-- Next: Mask. On deck: Lost in America.