A small-town setting is a good way to bring together a collection of characters, and a newcomer is usually the best way to stir up some plot among them. Tamara is that character, a duckling-turned-swan journalist who’s returned to the English village where she unhappily grew up. A good Cinderella story is nearly irresistible, and irresistible is what Tamara (Gemma Arterton) has become since her recent nose job. Tamara is not so much the lead character as the one around whom all of the action revolves, though she’s a nice role for Atherton, recently the female lead in Prince of Persia. This particular village is a writer’s colony, currently populated by a pompous, adulterous mystery novelist (Christopher Hitchens lookalike Roger Allam) and his wife, an American with writer’s block, a pair of mischievous teen girls, and the guy who dumped the teenage Tamara. Soon enough, there’s a rock drummer. And there’s cows, lots of cows.
Based on a series of comics by Posey Simmonds, in turn based loosely on Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd—the American writer is a Hardy scholar—the light comedy is directed by Stephen Frears (The Queen, Dirty Pretty Things, High Fidelity). Neither farcical nor subtle, it’s a pleasant romp about a few people whose lives need sorting out. You’ll hardly notice it takes two hours to do so, even though what needs to be done is pretty obvious from the start. No, this won’t be the film at the top of Frears’s résumé. Tamara Drewe is neither Hardy nor hardy fare. It’s more like a piece of candy whose familiar taste makes it no less pleasing.
IMDB link
viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 11/10/2010
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