Directed by Nicholas Hytner.  Reviewed by Paul Sorrell

Entering the cinema, I was hoping not to be served up a bland “feel-good” story about a cantankerous old lady living in a broken-down van in a famous writer’s driveway and the warm, fuzzy relationship that forms between them.

Fortunately, The Lady in the Van turned out to be a much more nuanced offering than the trailer had suggested. Like most of the residents of the comfortable, arty, middle-class London suburb of Camden Town in the 1970s, playwright and author Alan Bennett (played by Alex Jennings) is cagey about having a homeless old woman in the neighbourhood, let alone parked up in his drive.

And Mary Shepherd – played to perfection by Dame Maggie Smith – is indeed difficult to live with. Cantankerous is only the start. She is stubborn, insanitary, fiercely independent, and frightens the local children. Having spent several unhappy years in a convent, she is subject to religious delusions – or are they epiphanies? She also harbours a number of secrets that are hinted at during the course of the film – her time as a nun is one of them – but only brought out into the open at the end. During her 15-year stay in Bennett’s driveway, she gives very little away about her past – so much so that her exchanges with her host follow an unvarying pattern of cautious tolerance versus bemused defensiveness.

Mary forms one of a pair of dependent elderly women who have an important role to play in Bennett’s life – the other is his mother, living in Yorkshire, whom he settles into a care home over the course of the film. This duo is matched with another pairing – seemingly bizarrely, Bennett the man and Bennett the writer are presented as different characters, each played by Jennings. Their constant wry banter is not only amusing in itself, but makes the wider point that the most ordinary material can be transmuted into art. Bennett’s own unconventional lifestyle as a single gay man forms a subplot that offers a further parallel with Mary’s story.

Based on Bennett’s 1989 memoir of the same name (which was later turned into a play), The Lady in the Van is a beautifully crafted, intelligent film that entirely avoids sentimentality, despite its subject matter. The heroine’s extravagantly comic apotheosis in the final scene has attracted criticism, but should perhaps be seen as a comment on the writer’s freedom over the characters he creates. It certainly won’t spoil a good night out.

Published in Tui Motu InterIslands Magazine, April 2016.