MOVIES · STORY NOTES

Cruella

Cruella is a 2021 American crime comedy film directed by Craig Gillespie from a screenplay by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, and a story by Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel, and Steve Zissis. Set in London during the punk rock movement of the 1970s, the film follows Estella Miller, an aspiring fashion designer, as she explores the path that leads her to become a notorious up-and-coming fashion designer known as Cruella de Vil.

Description adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Cruella (film) · CC BY-SA 4.0. Text adapted for this entry.

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The story, including the ending.

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Source plot synopsis — includes the ending

In 1964 England, Estella Miller is a creative child with a talent for fashion, but is ostracized for her black and white hair and rebellious behavior. After Estella is expelled from school, her mother Catherine decides to move them to London, stopping at a party at Hellman Hall, a mansion on the Suffolk coast, to ask the host for money. Sneaking inside, Estella loses her mother's necklace while being chased by the host's Dalmatian dogs, which push Catherine off a cliffside balcony to her death. Orphaned, Estella runs away to London and befriends street urchins Jasper and Horace.
In 1977, Jasper, Horace and Estella are making a living as thieves. Jasper gets Estella a job at the Liberty department store, but she is made a janitor and denied the chance to design clothes. She drunkenly redecorates the window display and impresses Baroness von Hellman, a renowned but authoritarian haute couture designer who offers her a coveted job at her fashion house. Estella notices the Baroness wearing Catherine's necklace, which she claims is a family heirloom once stolen by an employee. Estella asks Jasper and Horace to help retrieve it during the Baroness's Black and White Ball.
To conceal her identity, Estella creates an alter ego named "Cruella" based on her childhood nickname, letting her natural hair show rather than dying it, and wearing one of the Baroness's modified designs. Jasper releases rats into the party, allowing Estella to swipe the necklace. The Baroness summons her Dalmatians with a dog whistle, making Estella realize that the Baroness killed her mother. Seeking revenge, Estella orders Jasper and Horace to kidnap the Dalmatians after one of them swallows the necklace. Over the next few months, she upstages the Baroness at various events, gaining notoriety via her childhood friend, society columnist Anita Darling. The furious Baroness fires her lawyer, Roger Dearly, for failing to stop Cruella, while Estella's increasingly haughty behavior discomforts Jasper and Horace.
Estella designs a beaded dress, secretly disguising moth cocoons as beads, for the Baroness's spring collection. On the night of the show, the Baroness finds that the collection has been destroyed by the moths, and realizes Estella and Cruella are the same person. After staging her own rock music fashion show outside in Regent's Park, Estella is captured by the Baroness's men, along with Jasper and Horace who are framed by the Baroness for Cruella's murder. The Baroness sets their hideout on fire and leaves Estella inside to die. She is saved by John, the Baroness's valet, who has retrieved the necklace from the fire. He reveals that the necklace unlocks a box containing Estella's birth records, proving that the Baroness is her biological mother. Refusing to accept motherhood over her career, she ordered John to murder the baby, and told her husband, Baron von Hellman, that the baby did not survive the birth, causing him to die of a broken heart. John, who could not bring himself to commit murder, instead gave the baby to Catherine, one of the Baroness's maids, who raised Estella in secret.
Estella breaks Jasper and Horace out of prison and reveals the truth, reconciling with them. Planning to expose the Baroness once and for all, they sneak into her charity gala, having arranged for all the guests to dress in black and white, in honor of Cruella. On the balcony, Estella confronts her mother, who feigns an embrace before pushing her over the cliff, unwittingly witnessed by her guests. Estella secretly survives with a hidden parachute. Now legally dead, she adopts her Cruella persona for good, taking the surname "de Vil" after her Panther De Ville car. The Baroness is arrested by the Metropolitan Police. Before "dying", Estella willed her inheritance to Cruella, including the manor which she renames "Hell Hall", moving in with her accomplices.
Cruella sends Dalmatian puppies to both Anita and Roger respectively named Perdita and Pongo. Roger, now working as a musician, is smitten with Pongo, and begins to write a song about Cruella on his piano.
Sources and content license

Source and revision history ↗ · Adapted from Wikipedia contributors, Cruella (film). Section headings and formatting adjusted. · Content license