The Lady in the Van (2015)

Jack and I loved this charming comedy about a writer who allows a dotty old homeless woman park in his driveway and, ultimately, his life. Maggie Smith gives a tour de force in the titular role of Miss Shepherd, but didn't win anything for it. Smith (last blogged in The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) said on Fresh Air the other day that her character didn't know how to say thank you. So I waited and, in fact, she never does. Alex Jennings (I did love The Wings of the Dove (1997) and The Queen (2006), in which he played the main love interest and Prince Charles, respectively, but haven't seen his extensive British TV work) is wonderful as the screenwriter Alan Bennett, on whose memoir and stage play the movie is based. 

Nicholas Hytner (directed The Madness of King George (1994), The History Boys (2006), and more) directs from Bennett's screenplay and the latter has written into the script a marvelous cinematic conceit for him to talk with himself. Watch in the very last few minutes for a man to arrive in a scene on a bicycle. Someone says, "Hi, Alan," and it is, in fact, the real Mr. Bennett. I also learned in the Fresh Air interview that the location is the home (on Gloucester Crescent, Camden Town, London, England, to be exact) where Bennett lived at the time and currently owns, but he doesn't live there now. The seaside scenes were shot in Broadstairs, Kent, and are beautiful as well.

You'll see many supporting cast members flit in and out, and the most recognizable to me, besides Jim Broadbent (most recently in Brooklyn), are Frances de la Tour (in these pages for Hugo) as Mrs. Vaughan Williams with her toothy smile and Dominic Cooper (starred in The History Boys (2006) with de la Tour and is better known as Howard Stark in Captain America: The First Avenger and its spin-offs) as an actor in one of Bennett's plays. Oh, this explains it: Bennett wrote The History Boys, both the play and the movie, and twenty (!) cast members from that play and movie are in this movie. The biggest, pun intended, exception is Richard Griffiths, the rotund star of both History Boyses, who died at 65 in 2013. However, there is another Richard Griffiths in this movie. I presume he is young (I can't find a photo to prove it), because he wouldn't be allowed to have the same Screen Actors Guild name as someone living.

Music is quite important to the plot. The opening credits roll over what is supposed to be archival film of a piano concerto. The conductor there is the actual composer George Fenton (after I covered him in (the movie) Earth, he scored Bears). I'm happy to have found this youtube link with the entire soundtrack to this one. The second to last track is my favorite: Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor, Op. 11, second movement. You may skip right to it here, but I thoroughly enjoyed Fenton's tracks as well.

We're with the critics on this one, averaging 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, with audiences coming in at only 75.