1985 drama/tragedy, dir. Mike Newell, Miranda Richardson, Rupert
Everett: IMDb /
allmovie.
In 1955, Ruth Ellis just wants to run a nightclub and do a little
prostitution on the side, but things have to get all complicated.
And of course she is that Ruth
Ellis, famously the last
woman to be hanged in Britain, and the film is about the events
leading up to the murder of her boyfriend David. Which is a problem in
two ways: on the one hand, if it hadn't ended in a murder, if they'd
had a screaming fight instead, it would have been just like thousands
of other stories and not at all worth making a film about. On the
other, one can't help feeling that a film which started with the
murder, and went on to the trial and discussion of contemporary
attitudes to the death penalty, might have been more interesting.
But what we have is a look at Ruth and, I think, an attempt to show
how this person could have ended up killing her lover. Except that
we don't get the actual Ruth, and not just from lack of information;
sure, we may not know what she said in private conversation, but we do
know that rather than One Big Moment of Betrayal, as shown here, both
of them had been sleeping with other people throughout their
relationship. We also know that Ruth's son Andy was not living with
her in London; he was with her mother, who's entirely missing here.
So this isn't even an attempt to show how the actual person might have
been thinking…
But this is what Shelagh Delaney (A Taste of Honey) wrote and Mike
Newell directed: what Pauline Kael called "a kitchen-sink film noir",
with everything grim and claustrophobic and smoke-stained because this
is the 1950s and people in Britain are finally noticing that the good
times they've been promised since the 1920s just aren't coming, so
you might as well take your desperate fun where you can get it.
What saves this film for me is Miranda Richardson, just before her
turn as Queenie in Blackadder II, thoroughly inhabiting the part as
a cut-price Marilyn Monroe knockoff who needs to be hard as nails and
almost manages to be. The lad who falls in love with a tart is an
over-repeated story, but this time at least we get it from the tart's
side, and indeed Ruth is shown as someone who's trying to be very
slightly more than a common prostitute; yes, there's the chain of
obsession, with Desmond (a splendid Ian Holm) wanting Ruth on any
terms he can have and Ruth wanting David ditto, but I also got the
impression that Desmond makes film-Ruth feel like a kept woman and
with David she can at least briefly forget that.
But it's awfully slow at times; pick a moment in the middle of the
film and ask "what does this scene specifically add to the story" or
"why is it specifically at this point in the sequence of scenes", and
you may come up blank. Part of that is a change in mindset: in 2021, I
know what a standard abusive relationship looks like, I know the
pattern of violence and kindness, and I don't need to have it laid out
for me in detail (though Richardson's expression the first time David
hits Ruth, that sense of completion because this is what a
relationship is and that part of it just hadn't happened yet… damn,
she's good.) But The Gift of Fear didn't come out until 1997 and
before that these patterns weren't in the general topics of
discussion, so like the toxic masculinity of Raging Bull they have
to be laid out at length.
Not, in the end, a masterpiece, but well worth it for the acting.
Once more if you want more of my witterings you should listen to
Ribbon of Memes.
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