Tamara Drewe
15, Nationwide
Tamara Drewe is directed by Stephen Frears and is based on the graphic novel by Posy Simmonds and so you may think, as I did, what’s not to like?, to which I would now have to reply: where do I start? Where, where, where? I wanted to love this film. I strained with every fibre of my being to love this film and, had the fibres of your being been available — which they rarely are; you are quite stingy with your fibres — I’d have strained with those too, but Tamara Drewe is just so determinedly superficial, uninteresting and predictable that, in the end, it could not be done. Or, as one of my fibres later told me, ‘I strained like a mad thing but, alas, it was not to be.’ I think your fibres might have said the same, had they been available, although, of course, they would also have added, ‘I’d like to go home now, if it’s all the same with you.’
The novel, which began as a comic strip in the Guardian, is a loose reworking of Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, and stars Gemma Arterton as Tamara, our Bathsheba. Tamara was once an ugly duckling with a huge nose but returns home to the rural village of her childhood as a transformed creature. She’s had plastic surgery and now has a cute, little nose. She has a flashy job in London as a journalist. (Why does everyone think London journalists are flashy? I’m a London journalist and most days I don’t even brush my hair.) She wears short denim shorts which, if they were any shorter, would be no more than gusset. She has returned to sell the family house after her mother’s death but does not seem much bereaved. She is more interested in her suitors, of which there are three. There is Andy (Luke Evans), the handyman hunk whom she dated as a teenager and who is our Gabriel Oaks. There is Ben (Dominic Cooper), a pouty indie rock musician who drives a yellow Porsche. And there is Nicholas (Roger Allam), the fifty-something narcissistic crimewriter who lives with his wife, Beth, on a smallholding that also serves as one of those appalling writer’s retreats. And to stir it all up? Two teenage girls from the local council estate who hang about the bus shelter, read trashy gossip magazines, spy on everybody and create mayhem.
It sounds like a fun romp, and it should be a fun romp, but it isn’t. Instead, it’s tiring and plain silly, without a single plausible character. Take Beth, who, in Cath Kidston pinny, is forever baking cakes or cleaning out chickens or pampering her writer guests or pampering her husband, a serial philanderer and hateful lech. Tamsin Greig is a lovely, nuanced actress, and quite the best thing in this by far — she is particularly wonderful when it comes to social embarrassment — but even she can’t make Beth ring true. Why would Beth have married someone like Nicholas in the first place? And the implausibilities just keep stacking up. I’ve never lived in a small rural village, as I’m much too busy being flashy in London, but do like to think that if I did, and was a married man carrying on with a much younger woman, I would not kiss her on her front doorstep, in broad daylight. Just saying. It is all marvellously pretty to look at, but the tone? Spectacularly uneven. Towards the end there is a scene of such diabolical violence it’s as if Quentin Tarantino had suddenly flown over and dropped it in, like an aid parcel. Strange.
The thing is, Tamara Drewe is not satirical enough to be a satire, and it’s not well plotted enough to be narratively intriguing, and it’s not funny enough to be an outright comedy although, having said that, the audience at the screening I attended did laugh uproariously. Again, strange, but maybe there was a coach party in? I don’t know, but it did seem that all the things we were meant to be laughing at — writers; pretentious literary types; celebrity-obsessed youngsters — have all been laughed at rather better before. And as for Tamara, although we are meant to sympathise with her, and care about whose arms she ends up in, we don’t. She’s just a daft girl with a nice bum. I wanted to love it, as I have said, but could not. Sorry. I hope you will forgive me, as my fibres already have. ‘Don’t worry about it, Deb,’ they have said. ‘ You gave it your best shot. What more could you do?’
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