Imelda Staunton as Vera Drake It's great to see Mike Leigh's Vera Drake doing so well, winning the best film award at Venice for example, given that the subject of back street abortion is not exactly the stuff of mainstream cinema
True the piece isn't overt political propaganda in the vein of Fahrenheit 9/11 for example.
Rather Leigh approaches the issues around women's right to control our bodies and our lives through the vivid portrait of Vera and her family and brief but incisive cameos of the women who turn to her for help.
In taking this in some ways more old-fashioned approach, in these days when docudrama has become more and more popular especially on the TV, the film doesn't loose impact at all.
Through engaging our interest in a number of well developed characters, in a beautifully detailed and accurate historical setting, Leigh draws his audience in to address the wider questions he considers.
One of the strongest messages that comes through, common to a good deal of Leigh's work, is the issue of class.
While working class women who fall pregnant are forced to turn to highly illegal and unsafe methods, even if some of them have the good fortune to find Vera who is not only kind but uses a relatively safe technique, the rich girl can go to a clean and efficient clinic and have the procedure carried out by a doctor.
At the same time, there is no hostility to the girl in this situation. She was the victim of rape, she had to lie about where she had been and live with the shame of both the rape and the abortion - without as far as we see having anyone to confide in.
On the other hand, the portraits of the working class characters aren't one dimensional.
Vera's humanity and that of her husband Stan who copes with his wife's arrest and her failure to discuss the favours she had been carrying out during their entire married life are sharply contrasted with response their son, Sid, who refuses to speak to his mother when he finds out what she has been doing on the quiet.
His feelings seem not only to be about the fact that he believes abortion is wrong, but because he fears the shame of the mother being visited on the son.
Even more starkly, Vera's generosity in risking her own liberty for no fee is contrast with the motives of Lily who is the front woman getting paid handsomely - on top of the tidy sum she already makes for selling rations on the black market.
And under the 1861 Offences against the Person Act, it was the person who produced by the fact that initially the characters don't know how things are going to pan out, so they are - at the rehearsal stage at least - as shocked as the audience at certain moments, this wasn't my primary focus.
But some of Staunton's responses broke down this division, explaining for example that she was aware of what it was in Vera's own experience that led her to put her life on the line in this way - but she wasn't going to divulge it.
My first response was to be saddened by this, but then on reflection I take the point. I'm sure there were hundreds, maybe thousands of women like Vera who helped other women in this way without taking paymentand each of them had their own motivations.
Maybe Vera is based on one of them - someone Leigh knew of through his midwife mother or GP father - or maybe she, like many of the most powerful characters in fiction is a composite of a number of real people with a twist of two of Leigh's own.
Certainly I was very interested when Staunton repeated what Leigh himself had said in earlier interviews that I hadn't heard, that he believed his father had also helped end the lives of patients who were dying in incredible pain.
The link wasn't one I normally make, but there are obviously connections.
Most of the audience were with me in wanting to focus primarily on the content on the film. Staunton responded to one question about their visit to the US by pointing on that while abortion is under attack there, there are many there who defend women's choice, as she does.
One of the most powerful moments of an impressive evening came from the intervention of a woman of sixty, who told us that she remembered the days of back street abortion and that watching the film had strengthened her determination to make sure we never return to those days.