Some of these women look painfully young and are wadded up with terror while others just soldier on and roll their eyes, eager to put the abortion and everything it means behind them. Vera learns about the women from her old friend, Lily (the marvelous Ruth Sheen, from Leigh's High Hopes), who trafficks in other people's grief as casually as she does black-market goods.
With meticulous attention to detail, from the dark, flowered wallpaper in the Drake parlor to the hints of algae-green that give the story a patina of age but not nostalgia, Leigh builds a case for Vera's everyday humanity.
Staunton won the award for best actress at the Venice Film Festival, where Vera Drake was also awarded best film. With her pudding face and tiny frame, Vera looks somewhat like a granny doll, which works brilliantly to Leigh's advantage when the law finally comes calling. (If Sheen had played Vera, the director would have had to work much harder.)
Staunton's physical performance keeps this saintly figure grounded and expands the character, which is helpful as Leigh's resistance to psychological explanation means we really never get inside Vera's head.
In the end, Vera performs abortions simply because, as she repeatedly says, she wants to help other women. With another director, such simplicity might seem like mere calculation or condescension, but here it comes as proof of Leigh's deep feeling for this character, who, after all, does not owe anyone (including us) a reason for why she does what she does.
Leigh's commitment to exposing all the pain the world has to offer, to showing, as Eliot wrote, the skull beneath the skin, is partly what defines him as a filmmaker. But what defines Leigh as an artist are those times, as in Vera Drake, when his conscience and his art shake loose rancor and the filmmaker embraces the possibility of good not just in himself, but in others.
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