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| SECRETS & LIVES
TEA AND SYMPATHY
Imelda Staunton as Vera. Below, the Drake family: Daniel Mays as son Sid; Alex Kelly as daughter Ethel; Vera; and Phil Davis as
husband Stan. Bottom left, Vera is led away as Stan looks
helplessly on.
vera drake
Not many directors have won the top prize at the Cannes or Venice film festivals and even fewer have earned honours from both. But with his latest work, Vera Drake, Mike Leigh can now claim such an accomplishment. Leigh, who won the Palme d’or at Cannes in 1996 for Secrets and Lies, has now added a Golden Lion to his resume, as Vera Drake took home top honours from this year’s Venice Film Festival, and its star, Imelda Staunton, was named Best Actress.
MIKE LEIGH’S VENICE PRIZE-WINNER VERA DRAKE IS A FILM ABOUT
A WOMAN WITH A SECRET SHE KEEPS EVEN FROM HER FAMILY -
BUT WHICH WILL DESTROY
ALL THEIR LIVES WHEN
IT FINALLY COMES OUT. NICK RODDICK REPORTS.
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Despite its success, there are few films which have less in common with the glamour and sunshine of the Venice Lido. Set against the grim backdrop of a sunless, grey winter in post-war London, Vera Drake tells the story of a simple, good-natured woman who cleans the houses of the rich, cares for elderly relations, and is always putting the kettle on for a nice cup of tea.
But Vera also has a secret - she ‘helps out’ girls who have got into ‘trouble’. In an era when birth-control was entirely a male domain and legal terminations were impossible, she carries out abortions. Not that Vera would ever use the word - or dream of telling her family about what she does: one of the most striking elements about the film is the fact that sex, the cause of all the trouble, is never once mentioned. As the poet Philip Larkin - who grew up during the period in which the film is set - once wryly noted: “Sex was invented in 1963/Much too late for me”.
Vera takes no payment for her services, but does not realise that her black-marketeering friend, Lili (Ruth Sheen), charges two guineas for each introduction - a discovery which stuns Vera almost as much as her inevitable arrest.
The humiliation of being driven away in a police car and brought up in court is, though, what destroys Vera and her world after one of her procedures (using only soapy water and a primitive bulb-and-tube pump) causes an infection and the middle-class girl nearly dies. The police are called in and she is arrested in the middle of a family party to announce the engagement of Vera and Stan’s shy daughter, Ethel, to their equally shy neighbour Reg. Thus, a moment of real family happiness becomes a time of tragedy.
In the period during which the film is set - either side of Christmas 1950 - almost everybody would have “known someone” (or known how to find someone) who could take care of any problems that might happen ‘down below’. But abortion remained a major crime and, although the investigating officers (Peter Wight and Martin Savage) are fair and even kind to Vera, her imprisonment is a foregone conclusion.
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