Tamara Drewe
Have a nose job: you'll get THREE boyfriends.
Review
Based on Posy Simmonds' long-running comic strip in The Guardian (which you can peruse at length here), Stephen Frears' latest film Tamara Drewe is an hilarious, irreverent, far-from-idyllic romp through the British countryside. The pastoral idyll falls apart amidst some downright rotten adultery and highly unglamorous conversations (including one about how satisfying it is to do a nice, big poo).
Tamara (played by ex-Bond Girl Gemma Arterton) is your classic ugly duckling: a teenager blessed with a schnozz to rival Gérard Depardieu and the affections of the delicious older man, Andy Cobb (who dumps her because "people are talking". PRAT). She's the rich outsider in a quiet Dorset village, and she's gagging for a little more life.
Flash forward a decade or so, and Tamara's a journalist for the Independent, returning home from London with a brand new nose and some short shorts. She sets tongues lolling with her designer face and astonishing wardrobe and it doesn't take long for her to attract the attentions of old flame Andy, as well as filthy old pervert and downright knob Nicholas Hardiment, and eyeliner-wearing emotionally crippled drummer in 'Swipe' Ben Sergeant.
A healthy dose of filth is provided by teenagers Jody and Casey, who spend most of their time chatting about having their "teapot lids" licked by their hearthrobs and reading crappy magazines until Ben from Swipe turns up in their village. From this point on they become sociopathic stalkers, wielding their not inconsiderable power to mess with the adults whose lives are, frankly, sufficiently ballsed up already.
Tamsin Grieg plays Beth: wife of aforementioned knob extraordinaire Nicholas Hardiment. She bakes and entertains a writer's colony whilst her genre fiction-writing cad of a hubby is shagging everything he can lay his lecherous fingers on. She's the most rounded-out character in this monstrously hilarious comedy (all the characters were born in comic strip 3D, remember), and her incomprehensible love for her husband (did we mention he's a knob?) is one of the most fascinating aspects of this corker of a film.
If you know your D'Urbervilles from your Obscure Judes, Tamara Drewe'll have an extra layer of super-duper for you. The main plot is modelled on Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, so you get all the excitement of a classic novel plus hotpants, scones, bovine stampedes and that stalwart of teenage life in Great Britain, egging.
Tamara Drewe is out in the UK on 10th September.
Helen True
