At the beginning of Strapless (1988), written and directed by David Hare, a woman (played by American actress Blair Brown) meets a man (played by Swiss actor Bruno Ganz) in a Catholic church somewhere in Europe (the sequence was filmed in Portugal) (Figure 1). This chance encounter leads to an obsessive relationship in which Lillian, a doctor in a cashstrapped London hospital, finds her life turned upside down by Raymond's unpredictable comings and goings dictated by his dubious financial activities. In a key sequence, Hare uses the American doctor to express his own dismay at the state of contemporary Britain, in a speech to her colleagues that blames the crisis at the hospital on the abandonment of national traditions by a government that places economic restraint above human need. However, her lucidity and independence are deeply disturbed by the personal needs that attract her to Raymond.

As in much of Hare's work for theater, television, and film, social and political beliefs come up against the irreducible, and often destructive, power of passion and desire (see Chapter 6). His characters also often feel uncomfortably out of place, and the casting of foreign actors in this film reinforces the disorienting effect of Lillian's affair with Raymond. At the same time, the presence of well-known European and Hollywood actors (Bridget Fonda also appears as Lillian's sister) conforms to the commercial logic of the contemporary global media environment in which producers have to sell their films in different national markets. Yet, ironically, the presence of foreign actors and characters is itself a sign of the film's “Britishness.”