Maestro Mike

Vera Drake
The Merchant of Venice
Venice Festival

There will be little justice meted out by the international jury, headed by British director John Boorman, if Imelda Staunton doesn't get near to winning the Golden Lion for Best Actress at Venice this year.

Her performance as Vera in Mike Leigh's Vera Drake is altogether superb. But then, remembering that the Cannes Festival unaccountably rejected the film, justice is not always what film festivals are about. You have to have luck, too.

This is one of Mike Leigh's most finely controlled efforts, impeccably set in the Fifties, when working-class Vera looks after her extended family, cleans for middle-class clients and, on the side, performs abortions for "girls who need my help". She is middle-aged and indomitable, succouring everybody, and never asks a penny from the women for whom she performs the illegal operation.

Then a young girl nearly dies, someone blows the whistle and a devastated Vera appears in court, her life in ruins.

Leigh is not telling us that what Vera does is right or wrong - just that the system militated against the poor and women. He suggests merely that Vera is offering her services out of conviction and the kindness of her heart.

Leigh's cast transcend themselves, avoiding the caricature that has been the chief complaint against his methods. Anyone who grew up in the Fifties will recognise Vera and her family. Nobody is actively a villain, not even Peter Wight's arresting officer or Jim Broadbent's judge.

A mousey-looking Staunton, whose remedy for almost everything but pregnancy is a nice cup of tea, carries all before her. And brilliantly so when, in the middle of a family celebration before Christmas, the police call and the game is up. She is ashamed not for herself but for her family.

"Thank God there are still great directors in England," said a leading French critic after the premiere. And great English actors, too.

Michael Radford's The Merchant of Venice, with Al Pacino as Shylock, was not so well received, but Radford's brave stab was handsome to look at and played with considerable skill.

Pacino's Jew is dignified, affronted and bitter in turn and is a much more restrained performance than we are used to from him. It is spoken with a clarity and directness we might not have expected. Jeremy Irons's possibly gay Antonio is particularly good, and American Lynn Collins makes a convincing Portia.

No one can manage the last pages of the play satisfactorily after the drama of the trial scene, Radford is no exception. But he brings it to life as well as any and makes us realise that it was written in a time totally unlike our own. An Arab Shylock may well be the next stop along the line.