I seem to have missed every other Mike Leigh movie since Secrets and Lies, so I’ve not seen Career Girls or All or Nothing. So after Topsy-Turvy, which I personally couldn’t stand, I was overjoyed within the first few minutes to see that Mike Leigh is “back”.

This is an incredible movie, incredibly flatly told, no text blocks at the end explaining “what happened next” etc, it just tells you what happened, and it’s really not quite as you might expect from movieland. It ends on a downer and leaves you there. I’m not sure whether I’d really say it’s about abortion, so much as it’s about facing up to consequences. In the end it doesn’t matter what Vera Drake does, why she’s doing it, and why people want her imprisoned for it; what hurts the most is that the pain is spread to her close family and friends. It’s quite an eye-opener in that area.

Imelda Staunton is tremendous, and Leigh knows it, letting the camera just stay on her face as she reacts to the world around her. These are the kind of slow shots and scenes that never become boring or dull. But where Leigh’s style shows best, perhaps, is in the many moments where the screen feels crammed with the hustle and bustle of day to day working-class life. He really does know how to work those actors.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 24th, 2005 at 6:02 pm in Movie Reviews, unrated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.