jon@sdcrdcf.UUCP (Jonathan Gingerich) (09/26/85)
I have to agree with Jeff Meyer's accessment of "Dance with a Stranger". The three prinicipals are neither likeable nor interesting. Even the Ian Holm character clings so long and is so generous to Mrs. Ellis that you end up feeling he is somewhat responsible for the tragedy. The plot does not build up to the climax, but winds down to it. Mrs. Ellis first appears to be a worldly women, tough, and in charge, determined to provide a future for her son she does not enjoy herself. By the end of the film she mewls about how her lover has broken a promise to take her son to the fair. Her lover, a disolute upper class lout, does seem to be getting things together, but just marginally. In between a sorid tale of humiliation and obsession left me anxious for the murder. Particulary disturbing was the last letter written by the real Mrs. Ellis, which sounds callous and absurb and does not even mention her son nor the Holm character. Siskel and Ebert commented favorably on the movie and Ebert was particularly complementary about the willingness of the director to leave questions like "What makes their love so obsessive?" unanswered, unlike Hollywood. This is a particular theme of his, but it seems to me you can blanket a bushel of ills with this criteria. Except for the first torrid love making, there is little spark between the two principals. If Mrs. Ellis had been more vunerable from the begining, and we had seen what the possibility of marriage, however unlikely it might be, could mean to her, I would sympathize more with her crime, but instead a manipulative, tough and resourceful women is reduced to jelly by a disagreable ninny, and it feels like sickness. The film does have two extremely fine merits. The cinimatography is impeccably seemless and never for a moment to do you doubt you are in '50s Britain. The indoor scenes, the club, the apartments, contrasted with an occasion exterior effectively in create a somber, doomed mood, but again, that may work against the film as a whole. Miranda Richardson acts marvelously, with a face full of life and busy bird-like mannerisms that dazzled me; I certainly look forward to her next role. (The clip they showed on "At the Movies", "Well take two aspirin ..." was one of the few moments I felt she struck a false note, however.) A film like a sheep's head, magnificently prepared, but rather unappetizing.