Tamara Drewe
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Roger Allam, Dominic Cooper, Luke Evans
Director: Stephen Frears
Rating: 3/5
Gemma Arteron leaves behind the big budget blockbuster to return to a new British film from Stephen Frears as takes on the title role in Tamara Drewe, an adaptation of the Posy Simmonds comic strip.
Tamara Drewe’s present-day English countryside, stocked with pompous writers, rich weekenders, bourgeois bohemians, a horny rock star, and a great many Buff Orpington chickens and Belted Galloway cows, is a much funnier place.
When Tamara Drewe sashays back to the bucolic village of her youth, life for the locals is thrown tail over teakettle. Tamara, once an ugly duckling, has been transformed into a devastating beauty (with help from plastic surgery).
As infatuations, jealousies, love affairs and career ambitions collide among the inhabitants of the neighbouring farmsteads, Tamara sets a contemporary comedy of manners into play using the oldest magic in the book: sex appeal.
The real strength to this movie is it's casting and while all eyes are on Arteron as she climbs over a style in nothing but a red vest top and hot pants is the supporting cast that really do steal the show.
Roger Allam is brilliant as the somewhat slimy crime writer Nicholas Hardiment who has a thing for younger women and tramples all over his kind hearted wife Beth.
It's a good performance from Tamsin Greig as the doormat wife, but there are times when you just want to shake her alive and pull her to her senses.
The movie does have a classics, such as Austen, feel about it as Drewe is caught between first love Andy and womaniser Nicholas as well as being pursued by the eye liner wearing rocker Ben, played by Dominic Cooper.
To a certain extent Tamara Drewe is a comedic romp in the country but it's perhaps not the comedy that many were expecting as Tamara harbours insecurities about men after her father walked out on her and her mother as a child.
But there are some great comedy moments an argument between Beth and Roger overheard by a clearly embarrassed Glen on the toilet being a prime example as well as the sexually charged foul mouthed teenager Jody, an excellent performance from Jessica Bardem.
But what is perhaps most irritation about the movie is the character of Tamara Drewe is perhaps not as fully explored as you would hope there are feelings of resentment and pain bubbling away inside her that are only really touched upon rather than delving into.
Visually the movie is beautiful as Frears uses all of Dorset's assets to his advantage, and it's good to see him move away from urban dramas such as Dirty Pretty Things or more costume movies such as Cheri for something a little bit different.
Tamara Drewe is a witty script, if not laugh out loud funny, that mixes comedy with sex as well as pain with joy and disappointment. And the movie is a tad too long it is a godd romp through the country.
Tamara Drewe is out now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw