★★★☆
Maggie Smith: what a woman. At 81, this matriarch of the big screen is not showing any sign of slowing down or settling for sub-par roles. And The Lady In The Van is no exception. It is a brash, witty and exceptionally English look at the life of Miss Shepherd, an elderly lady who squatted in a van in London’s Camden district in the 1970s and ’80s.
Based on a play by Alan Bennett, The Lady In The Van reads something like an incomplete biography or a chapter in an autobiography, as it takes on the perspective of Bennett (played by Alex Jennings), an unattached playwright, as he enters the neighbourhood and meets its infamous character: Miss Shepherd.
She’s sordid, petulant, arrogant and conniving, and Smith plays her like a violin – full of confidence, pomp, English humour and that kind of sanctimonious air only Smith can pull off without seeming charmless or ignoble. The neighbourhood tolerates Shepherd at best, but the general feeling is that she is hotly unwanted. Everyone hopes that one day she will just “move on”. But it’s Bennett she takes to best. His curiosity and compassion for Shepherd fuels their odd relationship as she preys on those attributes stealthily, manipulating the young man’s conscience to the point he offers her (and her van) a two-month sojourn in his driveway. It becomes a 15-year residence.
Shepherd takes as much as she can but gives very little, Bennett having to piece together her history from the leads she donates him. He exhausts himself searching for answers in the people who knew her before she became this irascible hermit. Her life, unsurprisingly, had been colourful. It’s a shame, then, that this story must detail exclusively what Bennett knows – his long and drawn-out 15-year encounter with a remarkably difficult squatter – and not her transition from the strong, haughty and talented woman that she once was to the lady in the van we eventually meet.
The Lady In The Vanopens in cinemas on Thursday March 3.
