Quartile rating: 7/10 · 1 rating
The true story of the relationship between Alan Bennett and the singular Miss Shepherd, a woman of uncertain origins who ‘temporarily’ parked her van in Bennett’s London driveway and proceeded to live there for 15 years.
Maggie Smith delivers a towering, eccentric performance as Miss Shepherd, elevating what is essentially a two-hander character study. The plot is episodic by nature — a slice-of-life chronicle rather than a tightly constructed narrative — which works in its favor thematically but limits dramatic momentum. The dual-Alan Bennett device (the writer observing vs. the writer living) is a clever theatrical conceit translated reasonably well to screen, though it occasionally feels stagey given its West End origins. Nicholas Hytner's direction is competent and London is rendered with warmth, but the cinematography doesn't distinguish itself. The subject matter — an eccentric vagrant and a repressed writer forming an unlikely bond — has genuine human oddity to it, but the overall execution is fairly conventional prestige British drama. The ending, revealing Miss Shepherd's musical past and offering a moment of grace, is touching if somewhat predictable in its redemptive uplift.