Vera O'Drake - Factbites

Vera O'Drake - Factbites
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Topic: Vera O'Drake

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	Vera Drake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) is fearlessly devoted to her family, taking care of her elderly mother and sick neighbour.
		Vera and Stanley Drake have a strong marriage, and after Vera’s secret is out, although the family has mixed feelings about what she has done, they remain loyal to her.
		When one of her patients nearly dies from her crude abortion, Vera Drake is tracked down by the police, arrested, and incarcerated for 30 months.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Vera_Drake (546 words)

	Chase Sequence - Writing - Vera Drake
		Vera's two main modes in the film are cheerful benevolence, as she is in almost the entire first half, and tearful remorse, as she is in almost the entire second half.
		In contrast to Vera's impoverished clientele, Susan (Sally Hawkins), the daughter of one of Vera's wealthy employers, is raped by a suitor and becomes pregnant.
		Vera helps care for a few of her neighbors and her elderly mother as well, out of the kindness of her heart, and whenever a problem arises, Vera puts on a kettle -- because a cup of tea fixes everything.
	www.chasesequence.com /writing/moviemake-out17.html (692 words)

	Vera Drake (2004)
		Vera Drake is a woman who will go out of her way to be of use to anyone that needs her.
		Vera's home is tiny and the others are so well appointed, it is only natural to assume that Vera will bear a resentment toward her employers, but on the contrary, she is a dignified woman who makes do with her meager wages.
		Vera is one of the kindest souls one will ever see in pictures in a long, long time.
	www.imdb.com /title/tt0383694 (842 words)

	Mixed Reviews - Vera Drake - reviewed by Gabriel Shanks
		Vera delights in her husband and children; the Drake family is incredibly close and, despite little in the way of money, they greatly enjoy their lives together.
		VERA DRAKE is a mixed bag, but Vera herself is a dazzling sight to behold.
		Staunton gives the preternaturally perky Vera a life that brims with detail: whether humming quietly to herself as she cleans the houses of rich women or taking care of her ailing neighbors, there is no problem that can't be solved by a kettle of tea and a biscuit or two.
	www.mixedreviews.net /maindishes/2004/veradrake/veradrake.shtml (661 words)

	Vera O'Drake - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Vera O´Drake was born around 1835 somewhere in Ireland and died sometime after 1900 at an unknown place, although her exact dates of birth and death are still unknown.
		Vera O'Drake is a fictional character in The Scrooge McDuck universe made for The Walt Disney Company.
		This page was last modified 18:26, 17 November 2005.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Vera_O'Drake (105 words)

	London Film Festival - Films - Vera Drake
		Vera Drake 'back street abortionist' is the ‘victim’ of her goodness she loyally cleans and services the upper middle class and provides a free abortion service on demand at no cost to working class and lower m.c.
		Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) lives with her husband Stan (Phil Davis) and their grown-up children Sid and Ethel (Daniel Mays and Alex Kelly).
		Like all of his films, Vera Drake is full of humour, sharp observations, and the richness and rhythms of everyday speech, interpreted here by a strong cast including several Leigh regulars (Phil Davis, Ruth Sheen, Jim Broadbent).
	www.lff.org.uk /films_details.php?FilmID=556 (888 words)

	Guardian Unlimited Film Reviews Vera Drake
		Vera Drake looks to me like a fully formed modern tragedy with a towering central performance from Imelda Staunton as poor, muddled Vera - and Staunton couldn't be so good if she was not given such superb support.
		Vera Drake's overwhelming mood of danger and transgression reminded me of the moment in Michael Powell's Peeping Tom when the seedy newsagent and his furtive customer quickly hide the pornography as an innocent girl comes in to buy sweets.
		Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake: A 'towering' performance
	film.guardian.co.uk /News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_Film_of_the_week/0,4267,1384377,00.html (949 words)

	Vera Drake: The Abortionist Downstairs @ AMERICAN DIGEST
		Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) is a kind, caring woman in her upper fifties with a loving family--wonderful, hardworking husband Stan (Philip Davis), Sid (Daniel Mays), her responsible son, and a grown daughter Ethel (Alex Kelly).
		Caught between two worlds, Vera Drake floats along an ephemeral plane of the unconscious.
		Thus Vera's case seems to be a simple matter of a woman who breaks the law willfully, and whose actions eventually affect her and her family.
	americandigest.org /mt-archives/005007.php (948 words)

	Bright Lights Film Journal Vera Drake
		Vera is forever recommending a “cuppa” for each grief she runs up against, large or small, but she also puts the kettle on to make the solution to bring about miscarriages.
		Vera moves easily between the wealthy houses where she works as a domestic, the lonely flats of desperate women, and the cozy, respectable flat she shares with her husband (Philip Davis) and two grown children.
		When Vera is taken in for questioning, the arresting officer (Peter Wight), sympathetic to Vera but stringent in his duties, suggests she may have once been in the situation of the pregnant girls herself.
	www.brightlightsfilm.com /46/vera.htm (1256 words)

	Vera Drake (2004): Imelda Staunton, Phil Davis, Daniel Mays, Alex Kelly - PopMatters Film Review
		Vera's part in all this is clearly profound, but she treats it as yet another unpaying job, one of the many she toils at each day.
		Vera's trundling through the streets and alleys that take her from task to task: she makes tea for this shut-in, cleans up someone else's flat, brings milk to another, all the while humming to herself, happy in her routine.
		At the same time, the Drakes are enduring a plainly uncomfortable time of it with Frank and his materialistic, dyed-blond wife Joyce (Heather Craney), who dislikes driving in from the suburbs to spend her holiday with her husband's hardscrabble relatives.
	www.popmatters.com /film/reviews/v/vera-drake.shtml (1361 words)

	Vera Drake (Mike Leigh): Imelda Staunton Philip Davis
		Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton), a middle-aged housecleaner, is completely devoted to her blue-collar family: her husband, Stan (Philip Davis); her son, Sid (Daniel Mays); and her mousy daughter, Ethel (Alex Kelly).
		Set in England circa 1950, Vera Drake is the story of a naïve, kind-hearted, middle-aged cleaning lady, Vera, the wife of mechanic Stan Drake (Philip Davis) and the mother of two grown children, Sid (Daniel Mays), a tailor, and Ethel (Alex Kelly), a mousy wallflower.
		Although Vera Drake has the feel of a biopic, it is actually the story of a fictional character.
	www.altfg.com /Reviews/Veradrake.htm (2132 words)

	Commonweal - A review of religion, politics and culture
		In a way, Vera Drake presents the flip side of the bullying sexual hungers displayed in Naked, Leigh& gritty 1994 study of a homeless man ravenous for sex and shelter in the streets of London.
		Vera’s is a world completely stricken of sex-her marriage is all flannel PJs and the fond peck on the cheek; and the engagement she engineers between her hopelessly shy daughter and the blandly sexless Reg promises more (or less) of the same.
		In parallel narratives Leigh contrasts the risks faced by Vera’s impoverished patients with the safer lot of Susan, the daughter of an upper-class family whose house Vera cleans and who, after being raped by a brutal lout she is seeing, obtains a legal abortion assisted by nurses, doctors, even a psychiatrist.
	www.commonwealmagazine.org /article.php?id_article=1020 (1124 words)

	'Vera Drake'
		Vera is the good Samaritan of the neighborhood, checking on her ailing mother, stopping to fix a cup of tea for a neighbor in a wheelchair, and inviting a lonely bachelor over for home cooking at teatime.
		Vera is transformed from a chipper, energetic woman who sings as she readies the tea to someone who can barely speak, whose eyes are dazed or filled with pain and who seems to age 20 years in 125 minutes.
		Vera's clandestine operations are contrasted with what happens to a society woman who is raped and finds herself pregnant.
	www.post-gazette.com /pg/04303/403209.stm (697 words)

	Vera Drake DVD Reviewed on AudioVideoRevolution.com
		“Vera Drake” is definitely pro-choice, but it is not a polemic in any conventional sense – Vera doesn’t see abortion as a political issue (or herself as a political person, for that matter), and wouldn’t know how to make a speech if her life depended on it.
		The “Vera Drake” DVD comes with a DTS soundtrack option, which is a little odd on a film this quiet, though it does a beautiful job throughout.
		What winds up being so cumulatively gripping about “Vera Drake” is that everything in it looks and sounds and feels like things that actually are part of life.
	www.avrev.com /dvd/revs/veradrake.html (627 words)

	Vera Drake (2004): Reviews
		Vera Drake is so patient, assiduous and attentive to emotional accuracy that it betrays the utter sloth of most of what we see when we go to the movies.
		As a character study Vera Drake is coarsely drawn, and as pro-choice polemic, it’s both a blunt instrument and a red herring.
		Vera Drake would not have been convicted in the year 2005.
	www.metacritic.com /film/titles/veradrake (1675 words)

	:: rogerebert.com :: Reviews :: Vera Drake (xhtml)
		Vera Drake is a melodious plum pudding of a woman who is always humming or singing to herself.
		Vera (Imelda Staunton) buys sugar on the black market from Lily (Ruth Sheen), who also slips her the name and address of women in need of "help." Lily is as hard and cynical as Vera is kind and trusting.
		Vera's world falls apart when the police become involved in an abortion that almost leads to death, and the tightly knit little family changes when the police knock on the door.
	rogerebert.suntimes.com /apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041021/REVIEWS/40921004/1023 (1156 words)

	Emanuel Levy : Review - Vera Drake
		However, compared with previous films, Vera Drake is a somber film with little humor, mostly in the early interactional scenes of the family members, and the courtship between the shy and frumpy Ethel and Reg.
		Vera's defense lawyer tries to emphasize her strong moral character and that she didn't profit from her actions, but the judge uses Vera as an "example," and sends her to prison for two and a half years.
		Vera gets her patients' addresses from Lily (Ruth Sheen), an old friend who now operates a black market service for items like tea and sugar, which are still in short supply in post-war England.
	www.emanuellevy.com /article.php?articleID=74 (1346 words)

	DVD Verdict Review - Vera Drake
		Vera also never presents an ideological justification of her behavior, repeating only that she wants to "help girls out." Some might criticize this as an evasion, but it seems realistic to me; Vera is not the sort of person to think in ideological terms.
		Vera's downfall, Leigh is saying, is not the doing of one particularly evil moneyed interest, but the result of an embedded class structure that transcends individual personalities and motives.
		Leigh is an actor's director, using the camera to accentuate the virtues of his performers; he often uses the close-up to agonizing effect in the second half of the film, showing Vera's once-cheery features locked in an expression of inarticulate sorrow.
	www.dvdverdict.com /reviews/veradrake.php (1107 words)

	Vera Drake Review - FilmFocus.Co.UK
		But as the film opens, it's sterling optimism with which we meet Vera and director Mike Leigh takes us on an intriguing journey to the end, a journey that'll bubble under for the audience and come to an abrupt shift for Drake.
		Vera does her job as though it were as simple as preparing a cup of tea; swiftly, smoothly and with as much professionalism as she can muster.
		Vera spreads herself too thin, however, splitting her time between obligations to her immediate family, husband Stan (Phil Davis, on fine form) and her children Sid (Daniel Mays) and Ethel (Alex Kelly), taking care of her ill mother, cleaning for rich people and offering her services to those in need.
	www.filmfocus.co.uk /review.asp?ReviewID=144 (565 words)

	Review: Vera Drake
		Although Vera Drake is about the downfall of an abortionist working during a time when the law in England decreed that it was unlawful to perform an "unauthorized" operation, this isn't really an "abortion movie." That's the context, but the tale is a lot closer to a Greek tragedy than a sermon.
		Vera Drake is vintage Leigh, relying more on the actors than the storyline.
		Vera does not view what she does as wrong, even though she is aware it's against the law.
	movie-reviews.colossus.net /movies/v/vera_drake.html (948 words)

	calendarlive.com: MOVIE REVIEW - 'Vera Drake'
		But from the moment we set eyes on Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton), a middle-aged housekeeper in a shabby green coat with the solid build and cheerful industriousness that empires are built on, we know she's an altogether different kind of Leigh heroine.
		Maybe it's because "Vera Drake" is tucked far enough back in the last century that its characters wind up swaddled in a sort of nostalgic dignity.
		Ultimately, "Vera Drake," which won best film honors at the Venice Film Festival, belongs entirely to its actors, whose collective portrayal of a bygone generation is remarkable.
	www.calendarlive.com /movies/reviews/cl-et-vera22oct22,2,6395014.story (1024 words)

	The New Yorker: The Critics: The Current Cinema
		The Restoration London of “Stage Beauty” is as roistering, appetitive, and noisy as the fifties London of “Vera Drake” is becalmed and repressed.
		Vera gives of herself freely and easily, and it is precisely in that selfless and attentive way—brisk, efficient, consoling—that she shows up in the flats of unhappy young women, and, using a rubber tube and a noxious solution, terminates one unwanted pregnancy after another.
		Vera’s cringing daughter is equally inarticulate about her gentle romance with a nearly wordless chap who visits the house.
	www.newyorker.com /critics/cinema/?041011crci_cinema (1352 words)

	SCREEN IT! PARENTAL REVIEW: VERA DRAKE
		Vera Drake (IMELDA STAUNTON) is a 1950s era, middle-aged, English woman who's just as content selflessly caring for her neighbors as she is her working class family.
		Vera then pumps her water mixture into the woman, with talk of her filling up and that the mixture will eventually cause the miscarriage.
		Vera meets other abortionists in prison who state that they're there (in prison) for performing that act (and being caught and convicted more than once for breaking the law).
	www.screenit.com /movies/2004/vera_drake.html (1700 words)

	slant // magazine.com: Film Review - Vera Drake
		Vera Drake is not an easy sit, and though it's not quite as euphoric as All or Nothing, I'm constantly amazed by how confrontational Leigh's films can be without being in the least bit preachy or condescending.
		Like any good Leigh film, Vera Drake is about the nature of family, which is the same thing as the nature of humanity.
		Compare Vera's behavior to that of her finicky sister-in-law, whose difficulty conceiving a child blinds her to the motivations of the older woman's actions, the implication of her scorn being that a woman who performs abortions can't be happy for a woman who actually wants to have a child.
	www.slantmagazine.com /film/film_review.asp?ID=1240 (482 words)

	Vera Drake - PittsburghLIVE.com
		You won't find even a hint of a rebuttal in "Vera Drake," but the argument for one side is as deftly drawn as it can be.
		Vera's disintegration is measured superbly as a wholly plausible descent into an alien experience of arrest, jail and trial.
		There's a bounce in every step of the consummately cheerful Vera as she ministers to her elderly mother and an infirm gentleman while working in a factory, cleaning other people's homes and caring for her family without missing a beat.
	www.pittsburghlive.com /x/tribune-review/entertainment/s_266544.html (658 words)

	AbsoluteNow.com: Vera Drake long synopsis
		Vera cleans the houses of the "well-to-do." In one of these, we encounter Susan, the daughter of the family.
		Vera visits a house that is much shabbier than those of her employers.
		Vera is a cleaner, Stan a mechanic in his brother Frank's garage, and Ethel works in a light-bulb factory.
	www.absolutenow.com /m/2004_Vera_Drake_long_synopsis.html (983 words)

	Vera Drake
		Vera ambles around energetically from job to job, bustling up and down stairways and even checking in on neighbors who don't much seem to want checking in on, but her cheerful mien brightens even more when the four Drakes are collected around the dinner table.
		Vera Drake is soul-stirringly good, but it's occasionally a little overt in staging its themes and insights, so it helps the film immensely to have an actor on hand who withholds as beautifully as he communicates.
		Vera Drake, reflective of the social, legal, and thematic dichotomies within the picture, is itself split between tantalizing suggestions and unambiguous moments of emphasis, with mercifully few lapses into outright overstatement.
	www.nicksflickpicks.com /veradrak.html (2238 words)

	Vera Drake
		Vera Drake foregrounds a warmth, a sense of harmony, in kith and in kin, that is often buried amid the kitchen-sink miseries of his films.
		Vera divides her time between cleaning the homes of London& upper crust and dutifully acting as caregiver to the many working-class shut-ins who were left incapacitated by the German bombing raids on London.
		Leigh cross-cuts between Vera’s visits to young women, in which she sets them at ease with a cup of tea, and the hushed, clinical abortion the wealthy daughter of one of Vera’s employers procures.
	www.culturevulture.net /Movies9/VeraDrake.htm (507 words)

	Straight.com Vancouver Movie Reviews Vera Drake
		Beloved neighbourhood saint Vera Drake is a part-time criminal.
		Vera is so generous, she even gets around to performing the occasional backstreet abortion.
		Of course, in her view and in that of the women--not all, but mostly scared youngsters--this is a form of mercy that the state doesn't offer even in the case of rape, abandonment, or too many damn children already.
	www.straight.com /content.cfm?id=5747 (372 words)

	JamesBowman.net Vera Drake
		Here everyone has a secret, from Sid (Daniel Mays), the black-marketeering son of Vera (Imelda Staunton) and Stanley Drake (Phil Davis) to Susan (Sally Hawkins), the upper-class girl who, date-raped and impregnated, seeks the imprimatur of the medical profession on her "operation" and to keep it hidden from her parents.
		When Vera is arrested she begs the police inspector (Peter Wight) not to tell her family, and one of the film’s most moving scenes comes when they have to be told and the inspector allows Vera to do it herself.
		Even Vera is ashamed of what she does and still more ashamed at the idea that her family must know about it.
	jamesbowman.net /reviewDetail.asp?pubID=1562 (1254 words)

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In the News (Sat 26 Dec 09)