Tamara Drewe
A new life in the country is a messy business in Stephen Frears's rollicking comedy, based on Posy Simmonds's much-loved graphic novel.
Shot on location in Dorset during an unseasonably hot spell last October, Tamara Drewe chronicles one turbulent year in the life of a young woman struggling to come to terms with the death of her mother.
The people she touches during the grieving process also undergo transformations, gaining the strength to make tough decisions about their personal relationships or pursue deep rooted obsessions to their catastrophic conclusion.
Screenwriter Moira Buffini draws inspiration from Simmonds's illustrations to sketch finely detailed characters complete with moral flaws, retaining the spirit of the book while playing to the strengths of the cinematic medium.
Gemma Arterton is perfectly cast as London newspaper journalist Tamara, who returns to the cosy village of Ewedown to sell her late mother's cottage.
Blessed with a cosmetically sculpted new nose and a sense of style that sets her apart from her wellington boot-clad neighbours, Tamara turns heads of the men folk.
She hires childhood sweetheart and handyman, Andy Cobb (Luke Evans), to oversee repairs whilst encouraging lustful glances from celebrated thriller writer and serial philanderer, Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam), who treats his wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) like a skivvy and is ill-suited to the rural setting.
'I don't like cows.
They exude bovine malice,' he complains.
Tempers flare when Tamara begins dating Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), drummer and driving force behind rock band Swipe.
In particular, schoolgirls Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie), who are obsessive fans of Ben, harbour dreams of stealing the rock God away from Tamara and they will stoop to any depths to get their man.
Meanwhile, Beth enjoys compliments from American scholar Glen (Bill Camp), who cannot disguise his admiration for everything that she does, gushing excitedly, 'If it were possible to have an orgasm from food, these mince pies would do it!' Bookmarked into four chapters representing the changing seasons, Tamara Drewe puts a joyful and sometimes darkly humorous spin on Thomas Hardy's Far From The Madding Crowd, with Arterton's sexy heroine invariably at the centre of the bed-hopping and intrigue.
Allam's adulterer elicits pantomime boos with every act of treachery and Greig tugs the heartstrings with a tour de force performance as a down-trodden cuckold, who notices her husband's natural glow after one liaison and innocently chirps, 'You're buzzing like my electric toothbrush just after I've changed the batteries.' Cooper gets lost in the mix, while the double-act of potty-mouthed youngsters Barden and Christie pickpocket all the best exchanges, including a quip about teapot lids that might just be one of the lines of the year.
Release Date: Friday 10 September 2010
Certificate: 15
Runtime: 114mins
