Vera Drake: A

Words like bold, brilliant, and daring almost seem to extravagant for such an earthy production as Mike Leigh's wrenchingly humane Vera Drake. True, the story is of a woman who works as a back-alley abortionist but don't be misled into thinking Vera Drake is a speechifying after-school special, desparate to assail you with its topicality. No, instead the film is a quietly dignified picture; a project so well-made that, in its starkest of moments, it almost brought me to tears.

The titular heroine, a quaint little post-war British housewife, is played by Imelda Staunton in a whirlwind of emotion (at times, almost too emotional). And yet the "melodramatic" performance pays off in a big way. Soon after having had her secret outed by the police - and forced to tell her family - we watch as Vera, the smiling, perpetually humming, sunny person, quietly and quickly erodes. As a singular instance of acting it is breath-taking and yet functioning as yet another part of Leigh's film, it becomes more than that; it becomes genius. You see, Staunton's mild theatrics link together these two sides of Drake the audience desparately needs; the sinner and the saint become one and as the two are inexorably woven, so too are the movie's themes.

And of themes, there are many. Writer-director Leigh weaves a rich, sincere tapestry of British life. The dialects are there, in all their folky humor, as well as the other (more crucial) things. We watch Vera's children, Sid (Daniel Mays) and Ethel (Alex Kelly), live their lives - there is a touching sub-plot about Ethel's love life - and we also get the unexplainable joys of watching Phil Davis, as Vera's husband Stan, act. Tied in together with all of this is also one helluva strong dissection of abortion (albeit an argument that is subtle and nuanced). Leigh observes the ways in which a young woman could "help herself" in the early '50s, as well as how those less fortunate had to find others to "help them".

Our hero herself falls into a helper of the latter category but by the time her secret is fully revealed, more than half-way through the film, our understanding of her character and her entire family is such that our empathy, compassion, and understanding for them is nearly as boundless as Vera's for everyone else. I expect that the director, a social critic gifted with an equally large heart, wouldn't have it any other way.