Also very fine are Platt, as the poet who sinks from friendly buffoonery to outright jealousy and extremism, and Bissett, as the mother who accepts her daughter's position and teaches her to make the most of it. McCormack pulls all of this off beautifully. She is filled with a magnificent and sensual power, but also a keen wisdom beyond her character's years. Veronica may not live the life she would hope, but she will live whatever life she can have, on her own rules. McCormack never hits a false note throughout Dangerous Beauty , even when the film calls for her to make speeches that seem incredibly modern and enlightened for that time.
Truth is often stranger than fiction.
Dangerous Beauty is liable to leave some unsatisfied, as it did me. In reuniting the lovers, once again we learn that love and desire are stronger than self-awareness, identity, and independence. Perhaps if Veronica had learned to rely on herself and spurned Marco's advances, I would feel vindicated. But then, a life of loneliness and empty nights doesn't seem like a much happier ending, either.