VENICE, (Reuters)
IS THE abortionist and mother who is the heroine of the new movie Vera Drake helping young girls or putting their lives in danger?
That is the dilemma posed by award-winning British director Mike Leigh in his latest film and there are no easy answers.
Leigh's latest portrait of working class England tells the dark tale of the crime and punishment of a mother who is caught performing illegal abortions in England circa 1950.
"The issue of the film, abortion, is and always has been a major issue," said Leigh at a press conference yesterday at the Venice Film Festival, where the film is one of 21 in competition.
"We felt that it was time to deal with it directly but in a way that I hope poses a moral dilemma for you the audience and doesn't draw simple black and white conclusions."
DISCREET ABORTIONS
The film depicts a world in which only the wealthy have access to discreet abortions while others mostly throw themselves on the mercy of practitioners like Drake.
"Thousands and thousands of women not only in the United Kingdom, but everywhere have always been Vera Drakes through a need of society for that to happen for better or for worse," he added.
British stage and film actress Imelda Staunton, who received a standing ovation at the press conference, anchors the movie as a working mother who risks her close-knit family's love after a girl on whom she performs an abortion falls seriously ill.
"I believe she absolutely thinks she is doing the best for those women and makes no judgement on those women," Staunton, looking much younger than in the film, said of her character.
Drake is her first collaboration with critics' darling Leigh, whose films many of which deal with themes of parents and their children have been nominated for numerous Oscars and won prizes at the Venice as well as Cannes film festivals.
DRAB REALITIES
Vera Drake is also remarkable as a portrait of the drab realities of life for working-class Britons in the post-war years when families squeezed into grim public housing projects and bartered for luxuries like cigarettes and silk stockings.
As the film shows in a subplot, better-off Britons had free access to abortions even then as long as they jumped through an expensive set of hoops which included a visit to a psychiatrist.
"What you see in the film in that there was a legal way that anybody with money could solve the problem and it's as simple as that," Leigh said.
