Based on an actual event that happened to the writer himself, Alan Bennett’s The Lady In The Van has since been turned into a stage play, a book and a radio drama, and now it’s cinema’s turn. Check out Alex Jennings and Maggie Smith in the new trailer.
The story finds Bennett’s (Jennings) neighbours in a well-to-do Camden street dismayed when a scruffy van shows up parked among the clean cars and well-kept houses. The occupant, a well-spoken but filthy woman named Miss Shepherd (Smith) refuses to move on despite protests.
Bennett, sensing that there’s more to her story – though initially unwilling to engage – eventually befriends her and offers her the use of his driveway for a short while until she can get sort herself out and move on. Fifteen years later, she was still there...
With Nicholas Hytner (Bennett’s regular theatre collaborator and the man who made the stage version which also starred Smith) calling the shots, The Lady In The Van also stars Frances de la Tour, James Cordon, Roger Allam, Jim Broadbent and Dominic Cooper. It’ll screen at the Toronto International Film Festival before it shows up in our cinemas on November 13.