Dark, haunting kichen-sink noir, deftly done; the life and death of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged for murder in England in 1955. The screenplay by Shelagh Delaney takes a few liberties for the sake of dramatic license but by and large keeps close to the real account. Miranda
Richardson (playing Ellis), a divorcee and ex-hooker, now a "hostess" in a tawdry nightclub in Soho. Though she lives with Holm, he is more of a pal than a lover and also the surrogate father to her son, Carroll. Richardson falls obsessively in love with upper-class Everett, an immature cad. But
the more she wants to be with Everett, the more he pushes her aside, both mentally and physically. Eventually she retaliates and murders him. The real case provided months of lurid reading for the British and years later, Ellis's son committed suicide.
STRANGER inhabits the seedy milieu beneath the repressed 1950s British surface. Richardson's performance is a knockout; with her birdlike gestures and darting eyes, she's reminiscent of young Bette Davis in her peroxide period. And she challenges two topics the English hesitate to look at--sexual
compulsivity and outward expression of nasty emotions; no wonder Ellis got the death sentence. leave a comment