Judy Parfitt as Vera WOW!!!
***POSSIBLE SPOILERS***
I felt that Judy Parfitt’s performance as Vera Donovan was, after Kathy Bates’ flawless turn as Dolores, the stand-out role in DOLORES CLAIBORNE. In this film she portrays so well the frustration that a person feels as their body and mind slowly stagnate during the long years of confinment that many elderly people go through before death. Also as the younger Vera, she was absolutely brilliant as the “Bitch with a heart of Gold”. In the beginning of the film the viewer sees her as a horrible monster, who rules her home with an iron first; then gradually we are allowed to see why she acts the way she does (a husband that ignores her and, in the book, children who treat her like s**t until their unfortunate passing, which she never speaks of) and we come to realize that the only control she has over her own life is the particular ways she runs her home. As Dolores says, “She did have her ways…but she was a prisoner of them.”
For me the most poignant of Judy’s scenes was in the sitting room when Dolores reveals to Vera the horrible things Joe has been doing to/with Selena. When she puts forth, so badly, the question, “Has he *beep* her yet?!” and then quietly reveals, with one tear slowly slipping down her cheek that, “Husbands die every day Dolores. They die and leave their wives their money. Why, one is probably dieing at this very moment…” you start to realize that she has slowly revealed to Dolores that, “An accident can be an unhappy women’s best friend” and with that revelation, a way for Dolores to save her daughter and herself, from Joe’s physical and sexual abuse.
That one scene is just a few minutes long but it is one of my absolute favorites, because you are watching two great actresses not just playing these women, but “becoming” them.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf so early in the morning?”