Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Murphy Howard I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Suman Roberson It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Kayden This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Spikeopath Dance With a Stranger is directed by Mike Newell and written by Shelagh Delaney. It stars Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Ian Holm, Stratford Johns and Joanne Whalley. Theme song is by Mari Wilson and cinematography by Peter Hannan.On Easter Sunday 1955, Ruth Ellis shot and killed her lover David Blakely. Wednesday 13th July 1955, Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be executed in Great Britain.Dance With a Stranger is a beautifully delicate film, producing what could have been a thorny issue movie, director Newell and his team stay clear of moralising or judgemental narrative smarts. They instead unspool an insightful film about a tragic crime of passion, a crossed classes love affair that ultimately spelt doom for both of the ill equipped parties.Sticking mostly to the real facts, with only some dramatic license inevitably taken, pic harnesses themes of lust, jealousy, dark passion and obsession, played out to a 50s London backdrop of underworld movers and club dwelling shakers. It's a sad story, even sordid at times, but it never once reaches for the sensationalist option.Though we are deprived of the court case and execution closure; and in fact the aftermath of the hanging which gnawed away at the conscience of a post-war Britain, it's a film that shows all that it needs to show. This wants us to look at the human beings involved, and then it asks us to draw our own conclusions about the principal players.Excellently performed by Richardson and Holm, and superbly mounted by Newell and his technical crew, this is cinema for grown ups and one of the best British movies of the decade. 9/10

Armand for me, it was first film in I saw Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett. and this fact remains important at each new meeting with this film. because it is example of great acting. and proof of an admirable art of director. because it is a realistic picture not of a case but for entire societies. because Miranda Richardson as a kind of Marilyn Monroe, does to her role force, delicacy and large slices of feelings fog. and Ian Holm creates a delicate character. crumb of real events, it is a beautiful work. and little more. because not the scenes are important after its end but the scent of ash, Tchekov flavor and the touch of dust balls. picture of a fight, scene of illusions, image of desire to be more than a shadow, it is a great movie and good occasion for reflection.

parryisle2 I had seen this film many years ago when I first signed onto the newly introduced cable TV. Having served in the USAF in the U.K. I thought this film did make a good portrayal of the class system that exists there. The film may be difficult to rent but for some odd reason it is still shown on Netflix. However, I did wonder, after my recent viewing, why Rush Ellis's letter to the victim's mother attempting to explain or justify the reason for committing this crime was not shown. Her "reason" (after all the battering she had taken from this severely flawed victim) plays a major role in this tragedy and by omitting it the film's producers leave Netflix viewers lacking an explanation for Ruth's crime. Her "reason" (believe it or not) was the wealthy cad did not honor a pledge to take her young son to a fair.

Richard Kelly Understandably, most of the attention went to Miranda Richardson's virtuoso performance as Ruth when this film first appeared, and time has done nothing to dim what must be one of the truly great female performances. Richardson's brilliance is in never taking a quick shortcut to sympathy for Ellis: she makes her selfish, vulgar and cruel, as well as vulnerable, haunted and uncertain. It's a stunning performance. It's worth noting though, that both Ian Holm and Rupert Everett are also excellent as the two men between whom Ruth vacillates. The design is inch-perfect: no love letter to the past, but a visceral recreation of a glamorous world with an unpleasant "backstage" and the script is magnificent: suggesting that Ruth's real crime is not murder, but not knowing - and sticking to - her place in 1950s British society. A cracking film.