Dance with a Stranger

A film about something that really happened in Britain. Ruth Ellis runs a nightclub in London. She has two children and has built her life among the customers. David Blakely is a young man from a well-off family who races cars. They meet, and the relationship quickly becomes two people wearing each other down. What the film is interested in is class. Blakely hides Ellis from his own circle; she is never admitted to his world and cannot give him up either. Meanwhile another man offers her stability and she does not choose it. The end is known: in 1955 Ruth Ellis shot Blakely and became the last woman executed in Britain. The case is considered one of the turning points in the argument over capital punishment. Miranda Richardson plays Ellis; it was her first major film role and it made her name. Rupert Everett plays Blakely. Mike Newell directed. A hard, well-acted film for anyone who likes drama based on real events and British cinema of the 1980s. Before you watch, know this: the narrative dwells at length on the corrosive side of the relationship and vindicates nobody.