The Lady in the Van

The Lady in the Van (2015) is a British drama-comedy directed by Nicholas Hytner — watch it online on iFILM. Maggie Smith plays Miss Mary Shepherd, a fiercely guarded homeless woman who parks a battered yellow van outside writer Alan Bennett's Camden home one day and, despite promising to move on within weeks, stays for fifteen years. Alex Jennings plays Bennett in a split-persona performance — one half living the story, the other watching himself live it.

Miss Shepherd is not a figure of pity. She is opinionated, demanding, occasionally unbearable, and entirely mysterious about the life she had before the van. What she was before the street — a pianist, possibly; someone with a secret that still frightens her — she keeps locked away. The film traces Bennett's reluctant accommodation and slow curiosity as he begins to understand that this woman is going to outlast his patience and end up in his writing.

Bennett adapted it from his own 1999 stage play, which drew from his personal notebooks — the story happened to him, in that street, with that van. The result is sharp without being cruel and funny without making Miss Shepherd the joke. Stream The Lady in the Van (2015) online on iFILM.