British director Mike Leigh is a master, and if you want proof of that, you need look no further than the Oscar-nominated "Secrets and Lies" or the brilliant "Naked."

Leigh certainly hits hard with his latest film, "Vera Drake," set in dingy London in 1950. It would be easy to mistake the two-hour picture for a tender period piece about the tight-knit working class Drake family headed by its warm-hearted mother, but keen viewers will feel the undertow in the darkness of the early scenes.

Vera (Imelda Staunton), who works as a domestic, is married to George (Richard Graham), who works in his brother's auto repair shop, and they have two children, Sid (Daniel Mays), a tailor, and the painfully shy Ethel (Alex Kelly). They live in a small flat and are still faced with shortages, years after the end of the war, but appear relatively content with their lot. Vera cares for her family, her elderly mother and others requiring assistance in their blocks of flats.

She's also got her eye on the bachelor Reg (Eddie Marsan), who lives alone after losing his mother in the blitz, and her subtle matchmaking meets with great success.

But Vera's care for others runs so deep that it takes her to the opposite side of British law. When young girls, she says, find themselves in a family way, Vera helps them out. That is, she performs abortions, even if she shudders at the word.

When one of the girls she's helped takes a turn for the worst, Vera is arrested and charged, and her world is turned upside down. How will the British courts deal with Vera Drake?

A pensive picture, "Vera Drake" is fueled, as you might suspect, by the actress who portrays the eponymous character. Staunton is masterful as the unassuming, doting yet no-so-pushy woman who has a kind word for everyone and a helpful gesture, too. After her arrest, Vera's struggle to understand her kind-heartedness as felonious crime is inscribed in her every gesture, her every expression.

The source of her caring might come from early trauma, which is hinted at but unexplored. In fact, Leigh is himself kind enough to trust his viewers to read the subtext, and we must pay attention to fully appreciate the film.

But it's more than worth it. "Vera Drake," with an engaging story, a fine script and brilliant performances all around, is more than the portrait of a woman caught between varying ideas of right and wrong, it also opens a window to the hypocrisy of a society that shuns unwed mothers and their "illegitimate" children but is loath to consider alternatives.

"Vera Drake" opens Friday, Oct. 29 at Landmark's Downer Theatre.