Parents' Guide to The Lady in the Van

Smith is a force of nature in her third professional outing as Mary Shepherd, the titular transient woman who literally parked herself in playwright Alan Bennett's life. In a role that you'd swear was written for her -- were it not for the fact that Shepherd did, in fact, exist -- Smith is gloriously curmudgeonly as "Mary," a woman too proud to see herself as homeless (her old van, of course, is her home). When a passerby calls her a "sodding beggar," she yells back that she's "self employed" and Alan is her "neighbor." Smith and Jennings' chemistry is fabulous as they banter and bicker. But she's at her best when she's being perfectly blunt. She isn't a romanticized, kind-hearted homeless woman who's willing to share her sage wisdom about a reversal of fortune; Mary is more likely to bark at someone than to thank them. So when she finally asks Alan to give her his hand, it's a moment of exquisite tenderness and connection between two individuals co-existing on the same property.

As Alan, Jennings plays two roles -- the Alan who lives and the Alan who writes. They dress differently and have distinct personalities, and Jennings is fabulous as both. Fellow British stage and screen veterans Frances de la Tour and Roger Allam appear as Alan's neighbors, who tolerate and occasionally look in on Mary -- but this film is really about Mary and Alan, who quietly observes her life, usually in contrast to that of his own aging mother, who lives in another part of England where he can't just walk out the door and see her. Smith and Jennings are a wonderful match, and The Lady in the Van is a quietly powerful testament to how sometimes it's the unlikeliest of people who make a huge impact on your life.