Film

Dance with a Stranger

Name: Dance with a Stranger
Genre: Crime, Drama
Released: 1985
Cast: Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Ian Holm, Matthew Carroll, Tom Chadbon

Biopic
Romance
Very dark

Miranda Richardson gives a searing performance as Ruth Ellis, the last woman executed in Britain, in this unflinching 1985 drama about obsession and class collision. It's a careful, unsentimental portrait of a woman undone by desire and circumstance—less courtroom thriller than intimate tragedy. For viewers drawn to character-driven historical drama with no Hollywood softening.

TMDb rating

3.1

If you liked this

Mona Lisa1986

Bob Hoskins as a working-class man entangled with a sex worker he cannot save. Similar theme of desire across class lines, similar refusal to sentimentalize, equally devastating in its quiet way.

But Slower than its crime-noir premise suggests. Hoskins's performance demands patience; the film won't meet you halfway.

Godard's Passion1982

De Palma's glacial dissection of obsession and desire between a man and woman who cannot bridge the gap between them. Stylish where Dance is austere, but identically focused on how love curdles into madness.

But Very eighties in its visual grammar; the score and editing will feel arch to modern eyes. Sexually explicit in ways that might feel gratuitous.

Sunday Bloody Sunday1971

John Schlesinger's examination of a love triangle where everyone is trapped by class, circumstance and the impossibility of what they want. Glenda Jackson's performance has the same quiet devastation as Richardson's.

But Deliberately paced. The emotional payoff is muted, not cathartic—some find that unsatisfying rather than moving.

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The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Last Temptation of Christ1988

Both refuse to condemn their protagonists for being human. Both use extreme suffering to examine desire, agency, and the cruelty of circumstance.

Scorsese's Jesus is tormented, desiring, fallible—a man unmade by impossible choices. Like Ellis, he is destroyed not by sin but by his own nature colliding with forces beyond his control. Both films treat their subjects with radical empathy rather than judgment.

But Explicitly blasphemous; deeply controversial on release and still provocative. If you approached Dance for a straightforward historical drama, this philosophical meditation may feel like a detour into hostile territory.

In the Mood for Love2000

Wong Kar-wai's film about two neighbours who discover their spouses are having an affair, then fall into their own impossible romance. Like Dance, it's about desire thwarted by circumstance, rendered in meticulous, almost painful detail.

But Deliberately slow and digressive. If you watch it expecting narrative propulsion, you will be frustrated. It requires surrender.

Cagney & Lacey1982

The TV series (not the film) offers intelligent, gritty crime drama centred on female characters with moral weight. Shares Dance's refusal to glamorize crime or the lives of its subjects.

But Episodic structure means less depth than a feature film. The early 80s production values show their age.

Damage1992

Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche in a meticulously controlled drama about forbidden desire and the wreckage it leaves. Another meditation on how passion can obliterate a life, shot with similar precision.

But The sexual content is explicit and the tone is cold. Some will find it exploitative rather than illuminating.

In the Name of the Father1993

Daniel Day-Lewis in a true story of injustice and wrongful imprisonment. Historical drama with teeth, uninterested in flattering its audience or softening its subject matter.

But Emotionally exhausting. The legal drama can overshadow the character study, leaving some viewers wanting deeper introspection.

The Long Good Friday1980

Bob Hoskins again, as a London crime boss watching his world collapse in a single day. Muscular, intelligent thriller with the same period authenticity and working-class specificity as Dance.

But The ending is abrupt and offers no resolution. If you need closure, this will feel like the film has abandoned you.

Scandal1989

Another British true-crime drama about a woman destroyed by scandal and circumstance. Similar era, similar moral precision about how society punishes women for the same behaviour men escape.

But Covers similar ground to Dance—if you've seen it, this may feel repetitive. The Profumo affair is less emotionally immediate than Ellis's case.

Vagabond1985

Both films end in death and ask how a person arrived there. Both trust the viewer to feel empathy without being told how to feel it.

Agnès Varda's Sandrine Bonnaire as a drifter found dead in a ditch, her life reconstructed backwards through interviews. Like Dance, it's an anatomy of how someone falls through the cracks of society, but told as a puzzle rather than a tragedy.

But French cinema from the 80s—deliberately slow, fragmentary, resistant to easy emotion. Some will find it too detached, too willing to let you construct your own meaning.

A Prophet2009

Both films examine how environment and circumstance forge a person into something they did not begin as. Both end with the protagonist destroyed, but never blame them for it.

Jacques Audiard's prison film about a young man remade by circumstance and the men around him. Like Dance, it's about a person trapped in systems they cannot escape, watched with unflinching precision as they adapt and harden and finally break.

But Brutal, sometimes graphically so. Long (two and a half hours) and French-language. Uninterested in sympathetic characters or redemptive arcs.