BEFORE: Claire Foy carries over again from "Women Talking". Since this one's in the middle of two other films with Claire Foy, I could have dropped this one, but I'm choosing not to. I still have to drop two more films from the chain before the end of the year, but, well, not this one. I've got my eye on two other films that seem like they'll cause less damage if I drop them. But, today's film was some potential connective tissue for two romance films, one with Maggie Smith in it - I suppose I'll find another way, as this film seems to have very little to do with romance.
We were planning to maybe drive out to the Long Island Fair today, it's something we did in 2019, just a few months before the pandemic, and we had a relatively good time - there was pig racing and high-dive acts and a brass band and such, plus some fair foods, which I always enjoy. But my wife didn't want to go if it was too hot today, which it nearly was - when it seemed fairly cool I checked the schedule, and the events seemed really lame. No pig racing, no high diving, just some glass blowing, corn husking and a horse riding demonstration. Eh, that's all right, we took a pass. Instead we went to a street fair here in Queens, which was also a bit of a bust, we went last year and I had some good Spanish food, but this time everything was overpriced, they wanted $20 for a turkey leg, and the same for just some Spanish pork and rice. Umm, too rich for my blood, so we just went to a diner nearby, had the place to ourselves and just had dinner out. Well, at least we got out of the house, and it didn't rain.
THE PLOT: A writer forms an unexpected bond with a transient woman living in her van that's parked in his driveway.
AFTER: Well, it's the last film in Brit Week, and I was kind of wondering why Jim Broadbent didn't turn up in "Breathe", it kind of felt like his sort of movie, but I guess they had Hugh Bonneville instead, and you just can't have them both in the same movie. Not to worry, Broadbent turned up today at last.
Honestly, I don't like how so many movies recently have been about people getting old or getting sick, with my mother in rehab after hospital after moving, it just feels like bad karma. Much of today's film is devoted to writer Alan Bennett visiting his mother, taking care of her and then arranging for her to be put in a nursing home, and then he continues to visit her, even when she's in a coma. It's just hitting too close to home, and makes me want to just go watch a sci-fi or a superhero movie so I don't have to deal with it. But I'm going to tough it out - of course, the main focus of the film is Bennett's relationship with the houseless older woman who lived in a van in his driveway for fifteen years.
This wasn't his intention when he purchased the house, to allow an elderly lady to sleep in a van in his driveway, (or "carpark" or whatever they call it in the UK) but he kind of took one for the team because Miss Shepherd had parked her van in front of other houses on his block in Camden, but either the neighbors forced her out, or she left because someone in the house was playing music too loud, or she received some kind of "divine guidance" to move her van to a new location. There's some debate here, I suppose, about her mental faculties, whether she truly believes she's getting messages from God or if this is just something she says to make things change in her favor.
As time goes on, Bennett learns more bits of information about her past, how she was an ambulance driver in The War (WWI, I assume) and then spent time as a nun (twice?) and also was an accomplished concert piano player - and then through flashbacks we learn that maybe she got in trouble when her worlds collided, since when she was a nun she continued to practice piano, and this just wasn't allowed in the convent for some reason. Learning her back-story allows him to regard her as a person who had some hard times and bad turns in her life, so this makes it very difficult for him to try and have her removed from his property. I don't think that the Brits have something equivalent to "squatter's rights", the more likely problem is that they're all too damn polite to call the police and have the homeless person taken away, it just wouldn't be proper. And so he endures the bad smells coming from the van, and from Miss Shepherd herself, and apparently since he let her use his lavatory once, she's got some kind of legal right to be there, or something.
Anyway, he's bound to get a good story out of it, someday. Gad, I really HATE these films where a writer is a main character, and he's working on (or planning to work on) a story about this exact experience, which is destined to turn into THIS movie that YOU are watching now. It's all just a bit too meta and self-referential, and the writer character is therefore AWARE that he's in a movie now, and ugh, that's too self-indulgent and a bit too twee. Just me? What's worse here is that the actor plays TWO versions of Alan Bennett at the same time, the one who writes and the one who leaves the house and lives, and since that doesn't really happen, he's not two people, I don't think he should be portrayed as two people. If this is the only way that a writer or director can portray inner conflict, by splitting a character into two characters, well, maybe it's time to rethink those filmmaking abilities - it's a very cheap (as in simple, not inexpensive) way to get this done. You might as well just put a tiny angel on one shoulder and a tiny devil on the other, like they used to do in the movies of the 1950's.
What does feel fresher is the fact that the central character is gay, and he just happens to be gay, it's not the main focus of the story. You couldn't do that 20 or 30 years ago without THAT issue taking over the plot, but here it's just a minor detail, that the people who come to see him at night are male, big deal, that's just the way it is, and Miss Shepherd doesn't really understand it (or does she?) because she refers to the young men as "Communists". But yeah, having a smelly old homeless lady living in your driveway probably doesn't help your dating game.
It's clear this wouldn't happen this way in America, now that every city and town is filled with Karens, if your typical suburban American mother saw a homeless person camped out near where her children live or play, she'd be on the phone to the police so fast, at best to have social services relocate them, but more likely to have that person arrested for not owning a house. We have this philosophy called "NIMBY" which stands for "Not in My Backyard", meaning that it's OK to have homeless people, as long as they're somewhere else. But no matter where you put them, they're going to be near somebody else - that doesn't matter to some people, though.
Anyway, I digress. Miss Shepherd actually goes through THREE different vans, and she paints them all yellow for some reason (I think I know why, but it's only a guess, and anyway, no spoilers) and from time to time, an older man comes by and taunts her from outside the van (this is later explained, but again, no spoilers). Over the course of the film, we learn more about the incidents from her past that still trouble her, and also eventually, the social workers come by and check on her and occasionally take her to the "day center" for a proper bath and some time indoors. Eventually, what happens to Miss Shepherd is what will happen to all of us, but it's treated here in almost comic fashion, my wife was watching the 2nd half of the film with me and she said it seemed almost like a Monty Python sketch at the end. Well, sure, the writer took some creative license with death here, but also the real writer, Alan Bennett, was once part of a comedy troupe called "Beyond the Fringe" with Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, and from what I understand, their skits greatly influenced those of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Also starring Maggie Smith (last seen in "An Accidental Studio"), Alex Jennings (last seen in "Operation Mincemeat"), Clare Hammond, Roger Allam (last heard in "The Book Thief"), Deborah Findlay (last seen in "Hampstead"), Gwen Taylor, Frances de la Tour (last seen in "Enola Holmes"), David Calder (last seen in "The Lost City of Z"), Jim Broadbent (last seen in "King of Thieves"), Cecilia Noble, Nicholas Burns (last seen in "Emma."), Pandora Colin (last seen in "The Aftermath"), Clive Merrison (last seen in "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society"), Samuel Barnett (last seen in "Jupiter Ascending"), Samuel Anderson (last seen in "Gunpowder Milkshake"), Stephen Campbell Moore (last seen in "Red Joan"), Dominic Cooper (last seen in "The Devil's Double"), James Corden (last seen in "Idina Menzel: Which Way to the Stage?"), Sacha Dhawan (last seen in "After Earth"), Andrew Knott, Jamie Parker (last seen in "1917"), Russell Tovey (last seen in "Effie Gray"), George Fenton, Richard Griffiths, Giles Cooper, Tom Klenerman, George Taylor (last seen in "Everest"), Eleanor Matsuura (last seen in "Alan Partridge"), Selina Cadell (last seen in "Match Point"), Dermot Crowley (last seen in "The Wonder"), Michelle Reid, Sam Spruell (last seen in "The Informer"), Rosalind Knight (last seen in "Start the Revolution Without Me"), Elliot Levey (last seen in "Murder on the Orient Express"), Sarah Lieberson, Linda Broughton, Marion Bailey (last seen in "Allied"), Lorna Brown (last seen in "The Batman"), June Watson (last seen in "The Death of Stalin"), Sam McArdle, Tony Van Silva (last seen in "Hellboy" (2019)), Geoffrey Streatfeild (last seen in "Rush" (2013)), with a cameo from Alan Bennett and archive footage of Edward Heath, Margaret Thatcher (last seen in "Blinded by the Light")
RATING: 6 out of 10 plastic bags
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