![]() ![]() The film adeptly recreates the grim claustrophobia of a Britain still emerging from the shadow of World War Two with its cramped tenement rooms and dark, drab decor. Imelda Staunton plays the titular Vera, a working class cleaner and housewife who appears the model of neighborly kindness – a kindness which extends to helping out women in trouble by performing illegal abortions. ![]() Watch All or Nothing on Amazon Vera Drake (2004)Īnother Mike Leigh film, another family heading towards crisis – this time in the very different world of 1950s London. What luck for us as an audience that Sally worked with Leigh so early on (and so often) in her film career. You may not enjoy watching this film as such, and you may find some of the characters frustrating, but boy, do they feel real. His style of filmmaking – where actors totally immerse themselves in the characters they create, building on months of research and improvisation to flesh them out – has resulted in some wholly convincing screen roles over the years. This was Sally’s debut film performance, and the first of three highly-praised films with Mike Leigh. ![]() She’s a cocky opportunist who manipulates those around her, hanging round the edges of other people’s conflicts, inserting herself into their dramas and generally messing with their heads. For all the brevity of her time on screen in this ensemble film, Sally still creates a complex creature in Samantha. Sally plays Samantha, teenage daughter of Phil’s oily fellow taxi driver Ron and his permanently-drunk wife Carol, dealing (badly, like everyone else in the film) with her parents’ emotional absence and the boredom of life on the estate – La La Land this isn’t. ![]()
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