She finds a job, in a beachwear shop run by a woman named Mildred Chambers (Dorothy Lyman). Milfred doesn't really need an employee. It's the slow season. But Ruby stands her ground, looks her in the eye, and gets the job, and after awhile she begins to like doing it. She likes dealing with the public and doing inventory and arranging the stock; retail is exciting, and it suits her.
Other aspects of the job are not so thrilling. She has a mild little flirtation, for example, with Milfred's son Ricky (Bentley Mitchum). But he's not her type, and she tries to discourage him. He isn't easily discouraged, is angered with her, tells lies to his mother, and causes her to lose her job.
And then there is a low, bleak period of unemployment and desperation, even involving a brief visit to a topless joint where she considers, and rejects, the idea of becoming a stripper.
In that entire sequence, you can see a different mentality at work than you usually sense behind American movies. Hollywood in general sees strippers and hookers in a curiously positive light, as if the sex business is a good one for a woman to get into. Maybe that's how a lot of men in the movie business feel. Many Hollywood female characters are prostitutes even when there's no earthly reason in the plot for them to be one. See "True Romance," for example.
"Ruby in Paradise" has different values. Ruby is filled with stubbornness and pride, and perhaps the best scene in the whole movie comes when Mildred Chambers discovers the truth about Ruby and her son, and goes to visit the young woman, and offers to rehire her.
Study that scene - the writing, the acting, the lighting, the direction - and you will be looking at a movie that knows exactly what it is about, and how to achieve it.
"Ruby in Paradise" was written, directed and edited by Victor Nunez, a Floridian whose previous films, "Gal Young Un" and "A Flash of Green," showed a deep sympathy with his characters. He cares about his people - what they need, how they feel. Here he has found the perfect star in Ashley Judd, who has done some television but is in her first movie role, and brings a simplicity and honesty to the performance that is almost startling in its power.
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