We saw this movie on the big screen at Bondi Junction recently.

People often say “This is a TV movie, I’ll watch it at home”. Don’t do it. And especially for this film. The cinematography is great, capturing the lush green English countryside and the quirky quiet streets of London , their coziness and sense of neighbourhood. For make no mistake this is a film that is ultimately about the human condition and the sense of caring we all have, albeit an unwilling one , when the situation is foisted upon us.

Allan Bennett (his true name) is a writer (his true occupation) .He lives a quiet ordered and self contained life, plodding away at his typewriter and enjoying considerable success as a playwright. A bag lady arrives on his street, not an ordinary bag lady, but a lady that lives out of bags which pile up in her Van, and in surfeit on the street. The quite comfortable middle class inhabitants are immediately confronted and in shock. She cannot stay in their milieu. But to rid themselves of her would be callous, an affront to a belief that they have in their own humanity.

That’s how Bennett sees her and himself . He personifies the ambiguity and discomfort of a middle class street confronted by the poverty and desperation of a poor underclass whom society does its best to ignore. He never tells the bag lady (Maggie Smith) to leave, but at the same time he never wants her to stay. It is a state of limbo that persists for 15 years and in which the Van moves from the street and into Bennett’s parking space.

And in which neither party ever addresses the other by their first name.

The English sense of reserve and noblesse oblige and yet its desperate desire for privacy is beautifully captured by Alex Jennings who plays Allan Bennett .

Maggie Smith is a grand unforgettable presence in Downton Abbey. In this movie see her now as a desperate sad frightened dependant lady, fighting to retain a sense of dignity and pride . All the while she lives in a house paint yellow van (painted by her in an act of almost baptism) in the midst of her memorabilia and detritus , eagerly grasping for straws of generosity with pomp and indifference, and occasionally when speaking perfect french hinting that she is not all that she seems.

It is a bloody great acting all round (especially Smith), a great script and unique cinema.

…..and astonishingly mostly true!