Written and directed by Academy Award-nominee Mike Leigh and set in England during the 1950s, this movie revolves around Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton), whose unrelenting dedication to her family is well known throughout her blue-collar town. However, there are more people than her rapidly aging mother and ill neighbor who depend on Vera's care. Though abortion was illegal and, of course, widely frowned upon in the '50s, Vera sees women going through unwanted pregnancies the same as she would
anyone else -- human beings deserving of treatment. With this in mind, she regularly induces miscarriages for those who need them, and her patients are consistently grateful for her gentleness and understanding. Unfortunately for Vera, the law doesn't see her as aiding those in need; they interpret the abortions as murder, as do most of the other people in her life. When Vera's activities are revealed, her family life and relationships with those around her -- including the ones she helped nurse back to health -- are put in jeopardy. Vera Drake also features performances from Jim Broadbent, Heather Craney, and Philip Davis. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi
Mike Leigh, who seemingly has single-handedly revived kitchen-sink realism in modern British movies, hits something of a career high with the marvelous Vera Drake.
In a hopelessly polarized debate, Leigh allows us to see real people involved in real situations. The film will keep people on either side of the abortion debates talking.
Staunton lends the role of Vera a great emotional complexity, eschewing any facile moral response to the social and sexual issues at the heart of the film.
Moralmente complexo, está longe de representar uma experięncia 'satisfatória' para o espectador, que sairá emocionalmente esgotado do cinema. Isto o engrandece ainda mais.
In this film Mike Leigh gives us a powerful story of a true working class hero that is at once an indictment and an endorsement of the stereotypical British stiff upper lip. As a whole, the film isn't up to the captivating performance of Imelda Staunton in the title role - it slips into dull and bleak domestic drama
from time to time and it moves rather slowly, but Leigh never wastes a shot, and the action picks up in the last hour before the film reaches its stirring conclusion. Worth seeing once.
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