The Lady in the Van ***½ (2015, Maggie Smith, Alex Jennings, Roger Allam, Deborah Findlay, Frances de la Tour, David Calder, Gwen Taylor, Jim Broadbent) – Movie Review

Maggie Smith is brilliant re-creating her stage role as Miss Shepherd, the transient derelict lady who parks up her van in Alan Bennett’s Camden front drive for 15 years, in the 2015 film The Lady in the Van.

Maggie Smith is brilliant, of course, re-creating her stage role as Miss Shepherd, the transient derelict lady who parks up her van in playwright Alan Bennett’s Camden front drive for 15 years. It’s based on a more or less true story.

Bennett adapts his own 1999 stage play (and 2009 BBC Radio 4 drama), opening it out successfully, and stage director Nicholas Hytner completes the task of making it into a proper film. They’ve made it translate comfortably and smoothly to the screen with no sense of strain.

The film is funny, touching, witty and finally very sad. And it kicks up quite a lot of all four of those things. But it’s Dame Maggie who elevates it. It’s her show, of course, and she makes quite the show of it, though it stays this side of too showy, and stays truthful. There is a sense that she could do this in her sleep. But she doesn’t sleepwalk through it. She’s there for it 100%, getting all the laughs and milking the big emotional moments.

Alex Jennings is good as Alan Bennett, suggesting the great man though he doesn’t really look or sound like him. He’s slightly fussy, slightly curmudgeonly, always rather nice, always wise, once or twice rather angry, determined not to show for a moment that he might be doing somebody a good turn. They’ve kept the idea of Bennett talking to himself – the writer half of him, arguing with the ‘real’ one. So Jennings appears on screen in two roles, which seems slightly stagy, but works OK and adds another layer.

Also notable are Roger Allam and Deborah Findlay as Bennett’s typically comfortable and liberal Camden neighbours, Frances de la Tour as another neighbour Ursula Vaughan Williams, David Calder as Miss Shepherd’s brother and Gwen Taylor as Bennett’s troubled Mam. It’s an ideal cast. Maybe it’s the part, but Jim Broadbent has less success with his role as a creepy ex-policeman blackmailing Miss Shepherd.

I’ve seen it twice already, and liked it more the second time. There’s certainly plenty of good stuff here that repays repeat visits. In one way it’s kind of very English and cosy. In another way it’s quite challenging and universal. It’s essentially a disturbing tragic story, but the quirkily funny side of it all is what makes it so irresistible. The humour is pure essence of Bennett, who puts in a personal cameo at the end. Also appearing in cameos are The History Boys stars Dominic Cooper, James Corden and Russell Tovey.

Bennett says: ‘Poverty is a moral failing today as it was under the Tudors. If the film has a point, it’s about fairness and tolerance and however grudgingly helping the less fortunate, who are not well thought of these days. And now likely to be even less so.’

It was filmed at Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town. No wonder Bennett says:  ‘It was weird to film The Lady in the Van in my old house.’

Dame Margaret Natalie Smith CH DBE (28 December 1934 − 27 September 2024)

Maggie Smith died on 27 September 2024 at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London, aged 89.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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