Mike Leigh's 2004 effort, Vera Drake, is sure to be controversial, but not for the reasons you might expect. rather than shock value (and the blood and guts of franchises such as Saw and Hostel,) Vera Drake takes a hot-button topic and looks at it it from a much-maligned perspective. It may cause you discomfort or make you angry, but it's hard to deny that the film is well made.
The eponymous Vera is a jolly 1950's housewife who lives in post-war Britain and works cleaning other people's homes. She is the proud mother to two adult children, sarcastic Sid (Daniel Mays) and excruciatingly shy Ethel (Alex Kelly) and wants to find a eligible bachelor for her isolated daughter. She is happily married to moustached mechanic George (Richard Graham).
In secret, Vera is an abortionist, terminating women's pregnancies for no pay. She uses the same soothing rhetoric for every incident and is not once caught. The procedure is relatively clean and safe, and as far as she is concerned she does no wrong. I didn't always like Vera. She was blind to the implications of her acts, cheery to a fault. Yet she always tries to do the right thing. I think something horrible happened in her past, but it was never fully explained. Yet, life goes on.
Vera and George find a possible "eligible bachelor," Reg (Eddie Marsan) an introvert highly affected by the war. Vera continues her operations, with women who have been put into contact with her by Lily (Ruth Sheen) who has untrustworthy motives. But when a near tragedy occurs, Vera is put out in the open and ages ten years in a strenuous couple of days.
Possibly more interesting than Vera are her kids, Ethel and Sid. Ethel holds herself hunched and quiet, with zero self-esteem. She meets her match in Reg, who seems as unsure of the courtship as she is. I wasn't quite sure where their relationship would go. Sid and his friend Ronny (Leo Bill) discuss post war issues and try to score a dance at a party, and Sid is the one to reasonably question his mother when the doody hits the fan. The film has a strong sense of place. A rape scene occurs, and it is handled tastefully (as tastefully as a rape can be), Imelda Staunton gives a great performance, going from a cheery confident woman to a slumped person who can barely drag her feet across the floor.
Vera is not a liberal Wonder Woman, a superhero who keeps her powers of cheerful strength no matter what. She is vulnerable and fallible, and she can be and will be broken. But somehow, I wasn't as involved, the second time I watched it, as I could have been. I think the director was pushing me too hard with the tragedy of it all, with what a great person Vera is. That never helps. You've got to hand it to Sid, though. With everyone else referring to the operations as taking care of "trouble" and "problems," Sid offers the first humanizing word: "babies."
The eponymous Vera is a jolly 1950's housewife who lives in post-war Britain and works cleaning other people's homes. She is the proud mother to two adult children, sarcastic Sid (Daniel Mays) and excruciatingly shy Ethel (Alex Kelly) and wants to find a eligible bachelor for her isolated daughter. She is happily married to moustached mechanic George (Richard Graham).
In secret, Vera is an abortionist, terminating women's pregnancies for no pay. She uses the same soothing rhetoric for every incident and is not once caught. The procedure is relatively clean and safe, and as far as she is concerned she does no wrong. I didn't always like Vera. She was blind to the implications of her acts, cheery to a fault. Yet she always tries to do the right thing. I think something horrible happened in her past, but it was never fully explained. Yet, life goes on.
Vera and George find a possible "eligible bachelor," Reg (Eddie Marsan) an introvert highly affected by the war. Vera continues her operations, with women who have been put into contact with her by Lily (Ruth Sheen) who has untrustworthy motives. But when a near tragedy occurs, Vera is put out in the open and ages ten years in a strenuous couple of days.
Possibly more interesting than Vera are her kids, Ethel and Sid. Ethel holds herself hunched and quiet, with zero self-esteem. She meets her match in Reg, who seems as unsure of the courtship as she is. I wasn't quite sure where their relationship would go. Sid and his friend Ronny (Leo Bill) discuss post war issues and try to score a dance at a party, and Sid is the one to reasonably question his mother when the doody hits the fan. The film has a strong sense of place. A rape scene occurs, and it is handled tastefully (as tastefully as a rape can be), Imelda Staunton gives a great performance, going from a cheery confident woman to a slumped person who can barely drag her feet across the floor.
Vera is not a liberal Wonder Woman, a superhero who keeps her powers of cheerful strength no matter what. She is vulnerable and fallible, and she can be and will be broken. But somehow, I wasn't as involved, the second time I watched it, as I could have been. I think the director was pushing me too hard with the tragedy of it all, with what a great person Vera is. That never helps. You've got to hand it to Sid, though. With everyone else referring to the operations as taking care of "trouble" and "problems," Sid offers the first humanizing word: "babies."
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