Sunday 24 October 2010

Tamara Drewe

Stephen Frears latest movie confirms what I for one already know; the British Film industry is alive and kicking. For a period of nearly two hours Tamara Drewe (2010) made me forget redundancies, criminal raids on the honest working people’s pensions, pending unemployment and all the rest of the day’s joyous news put out by our ‘caring’ government!

The film has a tremendous screen play adapted by Moira Buffini from Posy Simmonds cartoon strips published in The Guardian between 2005 and 2006 later re-published as a graphic novel in 2007. This present day story of country folk is set in a fictitious sleepy village in Dorset. Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton) a beautiful London journalist, returns to her childhood home after the death of her mother causing a stir among the locals who remember her, before her nose job, as an ugly, but ‘obliging’ teenager. Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) a successful crime novelist and a serial philanderer and his virtuous wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) run Stonefield a smallholding and writers retreat. Andy Cobb (Luke Evens) Tamara childhood sweetheart works as a handyman for the Hardiment's. Into this scene of seemingly idyllic village life arrives pompous rock drummer Ben Sergeant, who along with the previous two gentlemen mentioned; fall for the charms of our female protagonist.

Some of the funniest laugh out load sequences of Frears latest movie involves two hormonal teenage schoolgirls. Jody Long (Jessica Barden who can be shortly be seen playing Sophie in Joe Wrights Hanna due for release next year) and Casey Shaw (Charlotte Christie0 who are responsible for many of the plots twists and turns. This updated version of Far From the Madding Crowd has been meticulously cast, has a great British sense of humour and best of all its wonderfully entertaining. Highly recommended.

No comments:

Post a Comment