The Lady in the Van Magazine"'s Elise Nakhnikian said the film is all about the "fastidious, somewhat timid, and reclusive playwright Alan Bennett", and stated the film's "annoying glibness is neatly summarized" by the line: "In life, going downhill is an uphill job". The Lady in the Van The Lady in the Van is a 2015 British comedy-drama film directed by Nicholas Hytner, and starring Maggie Smith and Alex Jennings, based on the novel of the same name created by Alan Bennett. It was written by Alan Bennett, and it tells the (mostly) true story of his interactions with Mary Shepherd, an elderly woman who
The Lady in the Lake tale moves through a maze of puzzles and disclosures to its perfect conclusion. Marlowe makes a greater use of physical clues and ratiocination in this exploit than in any other. It is Chandler's masterpiece." The novel has also figured in fuller studies of Chandler’s work. One author comments that the book's title is an explicit reference to the Lady of the Lake, the enchantress of Arthurian romance, especially in making its focus a mysterious female who shifts between roles in different versions of the telling. This in turn mirrors the ambiguity between how the evidence seems to an observer and