The Lady in the Van

A woman parks her van outside the writer Alan Bennett's house in Camden. When yellow lines force her to move, Miss Shepherd asks to use his driveway; she says three months. Three months becomes fifteen years. Bennett is neither her friend nor a stranger; he looks after her, is disgusted by her, writes about her and keeps arguing with himself about what that says about him. Nicholas Hytner directed and Alan Bennett adapted his own text. Maggie Smith plays Miss Shepherd and Alex Jennings plays Bennett. Bennett only wrote about her after she died in 1989, first as diary entries in the London Review of Books and then as a short book. In 1999 he turned it into a play, also directed by Hytner and also starring Maggie Smith. The most concrete production detail is the location. It was shot where the van actually stood for all those years, in Gloucester Crescent in Camden, and in Bennett's own house. Who it is for: viewers who like English character comedy and Maggie Smith. Who it is not for: anyone wanting an explanation of the woman. The film gives Miss Shepherd's past late and incompletely, because Bennett never fully knew it either.