Rating: 
Summary: Oscar Worthy Performance By Miranda Richardson
Review: This is as good a cinimatic portrait of a factual homocide as I've seen since In Cold Blood, the infamous Truman Capote nonfiction novel, starring alleged murderer Robert Blake. Miranda Richardson is rivoting, her performance superlative, as she plunges deep into the depths of depair and self pity. Her portrayal of the attention starved and insecure Ruth Ellis is deeply inspired. How? I ask myself with each repeated viewing of this movie, could such a finely crafted flim be overlooked , almost ignored. Noteworthy as well is the fine performance delivered by Rupert Everett, as David Blakley, Ellis's part-time lover and object of obsession. And, of course the brilliant direction of Mike Newell, who creates perfection in almost a Hitchcockian way. His vision gives this movie the tention, the edgeiness, the underlying danger and the oh so real atmosphere, as to absolutely suck you into the dark seedy, lustful world of an obsessed and scorned woman.
Rating: 
Summary: "Kitchen sink film-noir" Pauline Kael
Review: This was the film that brought Miranda Richardson to fame, before her ill-advised turns on Black Adder on TV. I've always thought of Richardson to be like a British version of Meryl Streep. Both actresses use meticulous technique to convey character though I find Richardson the more interesting performer. Consider what neurosis she would have brought to Streep's Susan Traherne in Plenty. Here Richardson plays Ruth Ellis, involved in a tormented relationship with Rupert Everett's David Blakely, who became the last woman to be hanged for murder in England in 1955. You know things aren't good when their banter is full of taunts. Wisely director Mike Newell controls Everetts' narcissistic petulance so that we read him from her reactions. One scene when his back is to the camera as he descends upon her and her slapping turns to an embrace is as good a definition of their dynamic as any. Newell scores points off Ruth by making David's friends show disdain to her, though this disdain is too heavyhanded in some talking to the camera warnings, and in a scene where she confronts him for avoiding her. This scene is played as if Ruth is meant to be a coarse scrubber but Richardson makes us feel Ruth's humiliation, and our empathy is thereby shifted away from the "toffs". The only thing that David's friends could object to about Ruth is the fact that she peroxides her hair to resemble Marilyn Monroe ("Just look at her" one says). but considering how ordinary the friends are, this seems hardly a crime. Ruth is styled impeccably, even if Kael thinks her makeup looks "etched on", and I love the touch of giving her spectacles. Early on, someone describes how the wealthy "like a bit of spit and sawdust" I suppose to indicate the seamy aspect of both Ruth's working as a "hostess" and Ruth herself, but the British are never quite convincing when they try for grubbiness. As a third party, a man who wants to rescue Ruth from David, Ian Holm plays his usual ineffectualness, yet Newell having him attack Ruth in frustration gets an easy laugh. Newell allows the screenplay to go on too long, repeating things we have already seen, and giving us Ruth standing all day and night watching David, before the murder. However there are two great images in a fog - a flaming torch, and Ruth wearing a white head shawl. note is made of the moody and little-used score by Richard Hartley.
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