Dance With a Stranger is the thoroughly accomplished, agonisingly methodical Mike Newell film depicting the sordid but complicated relationship two people have with one another, further-still within a world of sleaze and immorality. It is a stark but mature observation of a handful of characters eventually consumed by their own misguided and somewhat disgraceful lifestyle, made all the more distressing by precisely what it is most of them already have that they go on to just casually toss away because of these complications. Newell's film is an apt and trimmed study of a destructive but very distinct way of life doubling up as a realm in which one may revel in one's sins; specifically, how remorseless items such as obsession and unrequited love can spawn as a result of that before going on to categorically destroy one's life.
The film covers the lives of two true-to-life people living in 1950s Britain, the two whom come to forge the film's core nucleus in its character study being Miranda Richardson's Ruth Ellis and Rupert Everett's David Blakeley; a mother of one, nightclub owner and a rich, upper class race driver. It begins with a rather clear process of distinguishing one's potentially sordid lifestyle with that of those whom look on from the outside. Ian Holm's Desmond Cussen, once a bomber pilot during The War, drives to Ellis' nightclub at a time when the sun has long since set and street lamps provide the only rays of light enabling one to see; an elderly man, the tomfoolery and distinct sense of happiness he observes in other cars as he nears his destination has him scorn. Additionally, his arrival at the club permitting the film to construct his composition through a spyhole from inside as he looks even crosser at those he stands beside in a queue acting all raucous. The man is there to see Ellis, but on a far more professional level than any one else; he is there to attend the nightly functions she hosts much to many male admirer's delight, but Cussen appears an acquaintance in comparison - merely a man with a more genuine relationship with the woman away from one night live-it-large stands in which sharing her company must be the predominant feature. In capturing Cussen's reaction in such a way that is through a spyhole, we sense a reaction to what it is he sees around him and must come to associate himself with, ie; one of a contemptuous nature or of immense distaste, one that he perhaps hides.
Enter Ellis, a frizzy haired; popular and highly extroverted hostess whose bright red lipstick, large blonde locks, pendulating earrings and loud, exuberant voice means she is nary too far away from the centre of everybody's attention, nor indeed the audience's - both of whom have a hard time in shifting focus away from the array of her distinguishable features. Her house of fun is a plethora of deviltry and lawlessness, a nightclub-come-public-house-come-brothel in which cacophonous behaviour and fun times within this realm is wholeheartedly encouraged and indulged in with great frequency. Things are made complicated with the arrival of young racer Blakeley, a handsome and seemingly decent enough man whom is already engaged to another woman and revels in his own joyous lifestyle of travel; fast cars and socialism, to his great satisfaction. His interaction with this proverbial behemoth of a woman in Ellis comes to tragically dictate how it is either of these person's lives will depressingly twist and bend in the all-too near future, an initial interaction and a passionate coming together eventually spelling disaster for all involved.
The film is a shrill demonisation of such things, Ellis' initial bond with Blakeley barely much more to her than another young punter in her ever-growing kingdom of smut whom she happens to bed; for Blakeley, the night turns into a very gradual and very dangerous obsession which puts everybody at risk and comes to see Ellis return such sentiments under a different guise. At the core appears something somewhat resembling a class war which is effortlessly embedded within all this sordid romance, evident in Blakeley's taking of Ellis to his large manor house and surroundings grounds plus village out in the middle of the countryside to which Ellis appears flustered and demands to be taken back to her London abode. On another occasion, a sensitive and rather private exchange between Ellis and her ten year old son Andy in their dingy little house, as she sits at her dressing table, has her reflect to him precisely where it is she stands on a certain Swiss private school to which girls go to be "good". This symptomatic rejection of what might be perceived as a 'proper', more informed upbringing is addressed while Ellis quite literally dresses herself or gets ready for another night of whatnot thus instilling a specific sense of persona construction as she verbally rejects another strand a young woman can seemingly venture down.
This ill-at-odds attitude, with the antithesis to what it is Ellis physically represents, is a pained but fascinating undercurrent hinting toward a result which was never going to be anything else than total failure; all to what is a routine surface relationship between her and Blakeley. The film remains morbidly fascinating throughout, Newell shooting Ellis and Blakeley's coming together at the early stages as unspectacular and deliberately colourless – it is transparent and a little blank; later on, their sex scenes carry more precise airs of passion and fondness as hues of red and darkened out cinematography encapsulated where it is they now are with one another and how far they've progressed in this regard. On a number of levels, all of which engaging without ever feeling particularly exploitative, Dance With a Stranger works rather well.
The film covers the lives of two true-to-life people living in 1950s Britain, the two whom come to forge the film's core nucleus in its character study being Miranda Richardson's Ruth Ellis and Rupert Everett's David Blakeley; a mother of one, nightclub owner and a rich, upper class race driver. It begins with a rather clear process of distinguishing one's potentially sordid lifestyle with that of those whom look on from the outside. Ian Holm's Desmond Cussen, once a bomber pilot during The War, drives to Ellis' nightclub at a time when the sun has long since set and street lamps provide the only rays of light enabling one to see; an elderly man, the tomfoolery and distinct sense of happiness he observes in other cars as he nears his destination has him scorn. Additionally, his arrival at the club permitting the film to construct his composition through a spyhole from inside as he looks even crosser at those he stands beside in a queue acting all raucous. The man is there to see Ellis, but on a far more professional level than any one else; he is there to attend the nightly functions she hosts much to many male admirer's delight, but Cussen appears an acquaintance in comparison - merely a man with a more genuine relationship with the woman away from one night live-it-large stands in which sharing her company must be the predominant feature. In capturing Cussen's reaction in such a way that is through a spyhole, we sense a reaction to what it is he sees around him and must come to associate himself with, ie; one of a contemptuous nature or of immense distaste, one that he perhaps hides.
Enter Ellis, a frizzy haired; popular and highly extroverted hostess whose bright red lipstick, large blonde locks, pendulating earrings and loud, exuberant voice means she is nary too far away from the centre of everybody's attention, nor indeed the audience's - both of whom have a hard time in shifting focus away from the array of her distinguishable features. Her house of fun is a plethora of deviltry and lawlessness, a nightclub-come-public-house-come-brothel in which cacophonous behaviour and fun times within this realm is wholeheartedly encouraged and indulged in with great frequency. Things are made complicated with the arrival of young racer Blakeley, a handsome and seemingly decent enough man whom is already engaged to another woman and revels in his own joyous lifestyle of travel; fast cars and socialism, to his great satisfaction. His interaction with this proverbial behemoth of a woman in Ellis comes to tragically dictate how it is either of these person's lives will depressingly twist and bend in the all-too near future, an initial interaction and a passionate coming together eventually spelling disaster for all involved.
The film is a shrill demonisation of such things, Ellis' initial bond with Blakeley barely much more to her than another young punter in her ever-growing kingdom of smut whom she happens to bed; for Blakeley, the night turns into a very gradual and very dangerous obsession which puts everybody at risk and comes to see Ellis return such sentiments under a different guise. At the core appears something somewhat resembling a class war which is effortlessly embedded within all this sordid romance, evident in Blakeley's taking of Ellis to his large manor house and surroundings grounds plus village out in the middle of the countryside to which Ellis appears flustered and demands to be taken back to her London abode. On another occasion, a sensitive and rather private exchange between Ellis and her ten year old son Andy in their dingy little house, as she sits at her dressing table, has her reflect to him precisely where it is she stands on a certain Swiss private school to which girls go to be "good". This symptomatic rejection of what might be perceived as a 'proper', more informed upbringing is addressed while Ellis quite literally dresses herself or gets ready for another night of whatnot thus instilling a specific sense of persona construction as she verbally rejects another strand a young woman can seemingly venture down.
This ill-at-odds attitude, with the antithesis to what it is Ellis physically represents, is a pained but fascinating undercurrent hinting toward a result which was never going to be anything else than total failure; all to what is a routine surface relationship between her and Blakeley. The film remains morbidly fascinating throughout, Newell shooting Ellis and Blakeley's coming together at the early stages as unspectacular and deliberately colourless – it is transparent and a little blank; later on, their sex scenes carry more precise airs of passion and fondness as hues of red and darkened out cinematography encapsulated where it is they now are with one another and how far they've progressed in this regard. On a number of levels, all of which engaging without ever feeling particularly exploitative, Dance With a Stranger works rather well.