The Lady in the Van | Little White Lies

The Lady in the Van

11 Nov 2015 / Released: 13 Nov 2015

An elderly person in warm clothing wrapped in a striped scarf, standing next to a blue vehicle.
An elderly person in warm clothing wrapped in a striped scarf, standing next to a blue vehicle.
2

Anticipation.

Looks like the cosy essence of middlebrow British cinema.

3

Enjoyment.

A complex relationship drama dressed as a jolly biopic.

4

In Retrospect.

Bequeaths a respect for oddball muses and their secret stories.

Alan Bennett’s hit auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal play from 1999 receives a mild but qui­et­ly mag­i­cal screen adaptation.

In the ear­ly 1970s, play­wright Alan Ben­nett became acquaint­ed with an age­ing female hobo who parked her van on his posh Cam­den cres­cent and stayed there for 15 years. He chan­nelled this expe­ri­ence into a com­ic mem­oir which became a play which has now become a film. The direc­to­r­i­al style of Nation­al The­atre don, Nicholas Hyt­ner, mim­ics Bennett’s cagey mode of being.

On the sur­face, The Lady in the Van is mild to a fault but – like its author – it is pow­ered by sharp obser­va­tions about life and peo­ple. The film is about life becom­ing art but also its flip-side: the need for a muse prompt­ing an artist to engage with life. As Ben­nett, Alex Jen­nings essays a char­ac­ter who is more inclined to observe than participate.

His bespec­ta­cled face is impas­sive. His dress is the pre­sentable uni­form of an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor. Only his thatch of straw­ber­ry-blonde hair and a red tie hint at the colour­ful ideas that absorb his wak­ing hours. With­in the film’s tone, Miss Shep­herd (Mag­gie Smith) is a com­ic foil, shak­ing up her well-heeled neigh­bour­hood with her aro­mat­ic antics.

With­in the con­text of Bennett’s social sto­ry­telling, she acts as a truth serum, antag­o­nis­ing all around her into reveal­ing what lies beneath the polite veneer of civil­i­sa­tion. With­in Bennett’s life, she is a cat­a­lyst for self-devel­op­ment. With­in her own right, she is a mys­tery wrapped in a glare encased in a van. For Miss Shep­herd is not a char­ac­ter that home­less­ness has made grov­el­ling or grate­ful. She is impe­ri­ous and sus­pi­cious, react­ing to all acts of gen­eros­i­ty with a sense of queen­ly entitlement.

The lib­er­al intel­lec­tu­al neigh­bour­hood accepts her pres­ence with arti­fi­cial cheer thats turns to hor­ror when she gets with­in smelling dis­tance. Smith knows the shades of her char­ac­ter inside out. Her acidic reac­tion to her neigh­bours is a reli­able device for divert­ing attempts to get to know her. Smith trades on sur­face feroc­i­ty telegraph­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty only through eyes that peer out of her with­ered, bat­tle-ready form.

Ben­nett becomes her pro­tec­tor while deny­ing that he is moti­vat­ed by kind­ness. He is oth­er­wise pre­oc­cu­pied by talk­ing to him­self. Jen­nings plays dual Ben­netts in a device that unfolds with quaint polite­ness. Divid­ed beings need not sig­ni­fy psy­chopathol­o­gy. Had Fight Club been con­cerned with the inter­nal nego­ti­a­tions of a timid word­smith there would have been no blood spilt – only ink.

Sub-plots involv­ing Bennett’s moth­er and a shady fig­ure (Jim Broad­bent) who has incrim­i­nat­ing infor­ma­tion on Miss Shep­herd are slight and unwel­come dis­trac­tions from the film’s bud­dy movie core. Ben­nett and Shep­herd are por­trayed as soli­tary crea­tures who sense a kin­ship while avoid­ing close­ness. Hyt­ner makes par­al­lels between Miss Shepherd’s furtive­ness and Bennett’s clos­et­ed sex­u­al­i­ty through struc­ture rather than on-the-nail dialogue.

As his obser­va­tions about her life deep­en so the writer emerges from his cau­tious shell. As he notes: You don’t put your­self in your writ­ing, you write to find your­self.” In this pecu­liar but inti­mate dance between he and the lady in the van the del­i­cate sym­bio­sis between a writer and their sub­ject is giv­en its dues.

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