Vera Drake

[sunnydale47]

Last night the foreign film club showed Vera Drake, and momomom went with me to see it. It's a haunting movie, and I want to write down my all impressions of it so I can set my thoughts aside without fear that I'll lose them

Comments

[sunnydale47]

That's a good point, Carla. I noticed that at the time too, but then I forgot about it later -- when they asked her how she learned to do it she couldn't answer, and then they asked if that had happened to her (or if somebody did it for her, I forget how they put it). She didn't speak but her face was very expressive ... she had obviously had an abortion herself when she was young.

Not only was there little acknowledgement of it being more than a late period, she chose to think of it that way. When the police tried to make her realize she was doing abortions she demurred. To her, she was just making their periods come ... making them "unpregnant" rather than aborting their pregnancy.

I still think it's odd that if that technique works it would not have been used more. As painful and dangerous as it would be, it has to be less painful and dangerous than knitting needles! I think you were right in what you said about knitting needles ... knitting needles are ubiquitous in that culture while a Higginson syringe, as ordinary as it seems to be, would be too costly and/or too hard to find for those people. I hadn't thought about why they showed her knitting several times, but I'll be you're right that it was to make exactly that point.

Even though I agree with what you say here, I still liked the movie. If he had shown the horrible pain that that technique must have caused, or had Vera more realistic about what she was doing, it would have been a different movie. It would have come across as violent instead of sweet. Maybe that would be a better movie, maybe not.

[momomom]

I liked the movie too. I'm still not sure if Vera's vagueness and the painfree "abortions" were not intentional and that maybe she really was not successfully aborting most of the girls.

One vote against that though was the way she checked the first one. I got the impression she could tell from the feel of the cervix if the girl was pregnant. That is somewhat realistic. But if she knew that much she probably knew she had to get the fluid in the uterus, not just the vagina.