MOVIE · 2015

The Lady in the Van

ComedyDrama104 min

When a woman of uncertain origins parks her van in writer Alan Bennett’s London driveway for what is meant to be a temporary stay, the arrangement stretches into years. Maggie Smith is Miss Shepherd, wary, eccentric, and difficult to pin down; Alex Jennings’ Bennett watches, argues, and quietly folds her into the edges of his daily life. Drawn from Bennett’s true story, the film keeps one foot in neighborhood comedy and the other in the harder details of age, privacy, and poverty, as the van becomes a fixture and the relationship around it grows stranger and more intimate.