Mike Newell

synopsis
Just married Hong Kong couple Chen & Lily emigrate to England, soon to become parents to a baby boy and generally struggle through life. Chen works long days in a restaurant, while Lily does the housekeeping, and daydreams of setting up their own business – which Chen does not want to do. When Chen lets his colleague Fok seduce him down a path of mounting gambling debts, he is recruited as a drug courier for a shadowy Chinese triad. Suddenly he realises that if he and Lily get their own enterprise this could be their only means of escape.Read More »

review – AMG:
A precisely cut social commentary, Dance with a Stranger captures the twin woes of austerity and repression that characterized 1950s Britain. Director Mike Newell keeps polemics to a minimum, treating his subject as a carefully observed study of class tension and sexual obsession. He dissects the Ellis-Blakely affair in the measured, diligent manner that one might employ to reconstruct a catastrophic train wreck; since the outcome is a foregone conclusion, Newell finds drama in the forces leading to that conclusion. The film works best as a grim character study, in which character is seen (by society) as an outgrowth of class. Read More »