VERA DRAKE
Lower-class British drama shows how a helpful do-gooder can take the fall for society's greatest 'unspoken' ill, but some of the 'slang' may get 'lost in translation' in America!
3 stars [(2004)UK/Fine Line Features/Rated R] - (2 hrs. 5 min.)
Written & directed by Mike Leigh
Lead Character/Cast
Vera Drake - Imelda Staunton
Review:
If British director Mike Leigh ("Topsy Turvy") has anything it's a gift for casting, and once again he is able to bring a character actor into the spotlight. This time Leigh has collaborated with longtime supporting actress Imelda Staunton ("Shakespeare in Love") and this film is the result of their six months of rehearsal, research, and unique improvisations which have yielded a fully fleshed out, three-dimensional 'secret' abortionist 'Vera Drake', a character that is so realistic one would expect to find her sourced in a history book.
Director Leigh is not merely interested in using his imagination to highlight one character or an aspect of the abortion issue per se, but instead shifts of the focus of the film to all of the people in Vera's life from her poor sick mother to the folks she brings soup and a 'hot cuppa tea'. The kind-hearted Vera would do anything for anyone and though the audience learns later that this includes abortions for girls (and women) who have 'gotten in the family way', it is only a small part of what this film is all about despite what the advance hype seems to indicate.
As one would expect, there is also a nod to the middle class folk that employ Vera as a housemaid and use their money and influence to subvert the law and get their abortions in private hospitals. Vera operates outside this world and her service is free (though her partner is secretly skimming the girls for money) and her methods are painless in keeping with a portrait of an angel of mercy.
Majority of the film works in this respect until Vera is caught due to an accidental miscarriage and the succeeding arrest, trial, and prosecution are a long labored affair. Here Leigh examines the rule of law and how its strict observance in applied to the poor while those with money are always able to circumvent it. Jim Broadbent ("Moulin Rouge") makes an odd cameo as the man who rules against Vera and sets the sentence to make her an example to other abortionists.
Certainly this is the ultimate hypocrisy, since its men that make babies, but women are left to deal with the problems that follow. In those days, with no 'legal' access to abortion and no proper husband any kind of birth outside marriage was immediately scandalized. Leigh leaves these ideas for the viewer to debate, but its his omission of clemency by the all-male court that speaks volumes long after the final credits roll up the screen.
Supporting Characters/Cast
Stan (Vera's hubby) - Phil Davis
Det. Inspector Webster - Peter Wright
Frank (Stan's brother) - Adrian Scarborough
Joyce (Frank's wife) - Heather Craney
Sid (Vera's son) - Daniel Mays
Ethel (Vera's daughter) - Alex Kelly
Susan - Sally Hawkins
Reg (Ethel's beau) - Eddie Marsan
Lily (Vera's 'friend') - Ruth Sheen
WPC Best - Helen Coker
Det.Seargent Vickers - Martin Savage
Very Young Woman - Sinead Matthews
Susan's confidante - Fenella Woolgar
Judge - Jim Broadbent
With: Allan Corduner, Lesley Sharp, Lesley Manville, Sandra Voe, Liz White, Elizabeth Berrington, & Emma Amos
WEBSITE/Trailer, etc.
Synopsis (from NYFF program):
VERA DRAKE is one of Mike Leigh’s very best, a shattering drama about the unintended consequences of virtue. 'Vera Drake' (a superb performance by Imelda Staunton), hardworking cleaning woman, fond mother of two, friendly neighbor, has a secret: she helps out women who find themselves "in trouble" with unwanted pregnancies. As this illegal activity comes to light, its ramifications tear apart her family and the world around her. Leigh abjures satire for compassion and moral complexity, employing a meticulously controlled realism in portraying a precise historical moment— Great Britain in the early 1950s, still shell-shocked from World War II, pulling itself up out of drabness and shortages. In the process, the values of decency, stoical restraint, and class solidarity are put to the test, the admirable disentangled from the hypocritical.
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