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Where the film fits in to the late Russell’s own life story is rarely discussed,
but no less relevant. After over a decade of relative (if controversial)
success, from his Best Director Oscar nomination for 1969’s Women in Love to his
zeitgeist-capturing Who collaboration Tommy in 1975 to the critical triumph of
his 1980 cult classic Altered States, the notoriously erratic filmmaker became
box-office poison in the mid-‘80s. Forced to slash his budgets, he made Salome’s
Last Dance for just $800,000 as part of a three-film deal with the tiny,
short-lived Vestron Pictures. Russell didn’t just save himself some money (and,
one imagines, a whole lot of screenwriting time) by filming a play; he also drew
a neat parallel between himself and one of his idols by embedding that play in a
fantasy where a misunderstood artist sees his censored creation brought to life
in shabby yet unexpectedly ideal fashion. And then he cast himself in it, as a
photographer.
All of these layers of meaning could have resulted in a film that was merely
clever (on top of being a whole lot of artsy, trashy fun). That’s certainly the
most I hoped for the first time I watched Salome’s Last Dance. What elevates it
– what makes this weird, skewed little literary adaptation an astounding film –
is Millais-Scott. Like the story itself, she is always working on multiple
levels. She isn’t a chambermaid, then Salome; she’s a chambermaid who has the
capacity to become Salome, and does so with the frightening tenacity of a
teenager who must secretly despise her daily drudgery and idolize stage actors.
(Maybe she is even a fan of Sarah Bernhardt, who Wilde had cast in his aborted
production of Salome.)
It must have taken both preternatural control and a well-developed sense of
chaos to embody a thoroughly disempowered character tapping into her own buried
yet bottomless reserves of power and charisma and entitlement. Millais-Scott’s
unusual appearance put even more pressure on her performance, dictating that her
transformation into a seductress would have to come entirely from within. But
what’s really mind-boggling is that the actress, just a few weeks before what
was to be her first starring role, came down with a virus that left her nearly
blind. What surreal images must Imogen-as-Rose-as-Salome have seen through those
wide-open, fogged-over eyes?
Curiously, the film’s metanarratives don’t even end with Russell’s multi-layered
finale. History has provided an eerily fitting coda: the star of Salome’s Last
Dance never made another movie. Rose’s breathtaking first and last performance
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was also Millais-Scott’s. A Guardian story from 2003 offers a hint of what
happened: the actress’ lifelong struggle with diabetes thwarted her career.
Though she told the paper she intended to return to her work after a kidney
transplant in the late ‘90s, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
As neatly as this ties up the story of Salome’s Last Dance, it’s a shame
Millais-Scott never had the chance to bring her genuinely unique presence back
to the screen – and no one thought so more than Russell. In 2000, he told an
interviewer that he had called her in to audition for a frozen-food commercial
four years earlier and hadn’t seen her since. Reminiscing about Millais-Scott’s
performance, he recalled, “I tested other girls on Salome, I tested half a
dozen, but they couldn´t speak or emote. That lovely speech she does with John
the Baptist, that was a tour de force, that should have got an Oscar.” Russell
was never known for his clear-eyed assessments of his own work, but in this
case, he was absolutely correct.
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