Films > Film Reviews
The Lady in the Van
18/11/15
The first thing I noticed while taking my seat in Cinema City’s plush Screen 1 is the - how to put this - “seniority” of the audience. A gentleman doesn’t reveal his age, but suffice to say it’s been a long time since I was one of the youngest people at a film. Or anything, for that matter. It was the kind of audience one might expect for The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Iron Lady, or any film in which Tom Conti gets laid. This struck me as odd, because I’ve always thought of Alan Bennet as a pretty subversive playwright; a dramatist who tackles tragic and serious – philosophical, even – matters under a veneer of English quaintness. “It’s not all Thora Hird and biscuits, you know,” I mumbled to myself as the lights went down. And sure enough, then began the deafening rustle of Murray Mint wrappers and not-quite-whispers of “WHO’S THAT? IS HE A BADDY? I DONE A POO.”
I’m joking, of course. The general maturity of the audience, who were impeccably behaved throughout, is testament to Bennet’s longevity and constant relevance. Since his emergence in the early sixties as part of the ‘Beyond the Fringe’ troupe he has been responsible for some of the highlights of British theatre, TV, and film. Often in collaboration with director Nicholas Hytner, his plays tend to migrate extremely well to the screen, as anyone that has seen Talking Heads, The Madness of King George, or The History Boys will attest.
The Lady in the Van is another Hytner-helmed migration from stage to screen and, despite the hit West End play having been staged in 1999, retains its leading lady – the incomparable Dame Maggie Smith. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of the relationship between Bennet himself and Mary Shepherd, a mildly deranged homeless woman who lived in a Bedford van on Bennet’s Camden driveway for 15 years, and charts the blossoming of their acquaintance from uneasy acceptance to unlikely friendship.
It all sounds, no doubt, a bit depressing, and it certainly has its dark moments, but The Lady… is, if anything, a comedy, the heart of which is the slow unfurling of Miss Shepherds true nature, history, and identity. It almost goes without saying that the film utterly depends on Maggie Smith’s performance, and it seems almost as redundant to report that - of course - it is an absolute masterclass. This is not to detract from Alex Jennings’ vital role as Bennet (or Bennets, actually) which manages to be utterly convincing without descending into mere impression.
The overall result is a warm, quirky, charming and thoroughly enjoyable paean to tolerance and friendship, which never becomes as sentimental or sugary as it might, and is full of little shocks and surprises, both pleasant and not so. I recon these oldies are onto something, possibly.