The Contenders:
Annette Bening: Being Julia
Kate Winslet: The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Catalina Sandino Moreno: Maria Full of Grace
Hilary Swank: Million Dollar Baby (winner)
Imelda Staunton: Vera Drake
Showing posts with label Vera Drake. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vera Drake. Show all posts
Friday, January 10, 2020
Friday, October 18, 2019
Friday, January 25, 2019
Tuesday, March 21, 2017
Helping Hands
Film: Vera Drake
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.
Format: DVD from personal collection on laptop.
There’s a generation or so of British actresses that I love in just about everything. Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Helen Mirren, and Joan Plowright come to mind. Imelda Staunton is a bit younger than that group, but she’s just about in the same league. What Staunton can do that the others don’t do as well is play what the Monty Python crew called a “pepperpot,” a stereotypical middle-aged British housewife. That’s absolutely the case in Vera Drake, where, aside from the seriousness of the drama at play here, she could have stepped out of a skit about Mrs. Premise and Mrs. Conclusion.
It’s some time into the film before we really get a sense of what is happening. Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) works as a domestic for a number of families in post-World War II London. She also spends a good deal of her time looking after people who need help, including her infirm mother and a neighbor named Reg (Eddie Marsan), who she invites to tea, perhaps surreptitiously hoping that Reg might become attracted to her painfully shy and mousey daughter Ethel (Alex Kelly). Vera and her husband Stan (Phil Davis) live a normal life as much as they can in the still-rationing world of 1950s London, a fact that their son Sid (Daniel Mays) plays to his advantage. His job in a clothing shop gives him access to nylons, which he trades to his friends for small luxuries.
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