The Lady in the Van's reviews
Media reviews
The Hollywood Reporter
It's Smith's eccentric oldster who is the film's driving force, and the 80-year-old actress doesn't disappoint. Not surprisingly, she fully exploits the humor in her character's bizarreness.
Variety
A grandly ornery Maggie Smith is the chief draw in this slight, innocuously enjoyable adaptation of Alan Bennett's memoir.
Los Angeles Times
A delicately written, boisterously performed movie about the difficult people who dare us to care about them.
Empire
Unshowy to a fault, Hytner delivers a fine, moving comedy of English manners between a writer and his eccentric tenant, which slowly deepens into an exploration of human bonds.
Rolling Stone
Maggie Smith saves the day in this story of a British vagrant living in her car.
New York Post
Smith brings as much salt and vinegar as a basket of fish and chips (...) And the movie?s mix of passivity and grit, of hostility and politeness, of eccentricity and rule-following, adds up to something: a meditation on that peculiar state of existence called Englishness.
El Mundo
Maggie Smith multiplied by a thousand (...) She isn't only an actress; She is the perfect representation of all what hurts. Perfect.
Fotogramas
'The Lady in The Van' outlines a psychological puzzle that challenges narrative strategies.
Cinemanía
Despite everything, 'The Lady in the Van' works as reasonably effective pastime thanks to the performance of the veteran actress Maggie Smith.
New York Times
In Ms. Smith's tough, levelheaded performance, Mary is an irascible termagant full of batty notions clutching on to life as best she can. She is hard to like, and that?s good.
The A.V. Club
Though director Nicholas Hytner does his best to enliven the material, Bennett very much comes across as a dull man's Charlie Kaufman, even more so when the movie ends with flat, unearned whimsicality.
The Wrap
Alan Bennett's tale of a homeless woman who lived in his driveway for 15 years is too much about him, and not enough about her.
Festival Internacional de Cine de Lanzarote