SHE HELPS GIRLS OUT
Being home with the flu isn't good for much, but yesterday I was lucky enough to catch VERA DRAKE on one of the myriad Encore channels. I have long admired Mike Leigh's gritty stories of working-class England, and this one has the added punch of a great moral argument at its center, and a killer performance from Imelda Staunton. The story struck me as particularly sinister, though, given the current climate around abortion in this country, and it made me think about what sort of horrors might be visited upon women in the event that Roe really is over-turned.
But I digress. Didn't mean to wax political there. The bottom line is, this is another triumph from Leigh, whose actors clearly love him. Why else would Jim Broadbent and Allan Corduner - the stars of Leigh's lush and moving TOPSY-TURVY - show up for tiny cameos in VERA DRAKE? This film, like all of Leigh's, is packed with wonderful performances from actors you might never see anywhere else. Check it out.
posted by Em @ 6:01 PM
2 Comments:
Sorry to hear you are still illin', but the benefit is lots of movie viewing!
VERA DRAKE is stupendous. I resisted seeing it at first, as I feared getting super depressed regarding the prospect of life before Roe. However, Imelda's performance saved me.
And I'm always fascinated by Leigh's examination of class - and abortion is clearly a choice the upper class has in this film, and the lower classes are left with no choice, except for super Vera.
I think I saw in the extras on DVD that the scene where the police come to get Vera was completely improvised. Such superior acting.
LOVE THOSE BRITS.
I have always been fascinated by the way Mike Leigh is rumored to work with his actors - i.e. he never starts with a script, and just works from improvisation based on scene and story ideas. Seems that like was true with VERA DRAKE, also. IMBD also said that the actors were all forbidden to speak to their friends and family about the substance of the story. So cool. If true, you can see how that added to the nervous tension throughout the film.
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