Tamara Drewe

I seemed to be in a minority of one who thought that Stephen Frears last-but-one film, The Queen, was rather overated and tonally confused. If The Queen was tonally confused, Tamara Drewe finishes in a head-on collision of tones, moods and genres. To be fair, not all of that is down to Frears or this film. Tamara Drewe is an adaptation of Posy Simmonds graphic story of the same name, which in turn is a loose updating of Thomas Hardy's classic novel Far From the Madding Crowd. Far From the Madding Crowd is essentially a tragic novel which has a happy ending shoe-horned in at the last minute at the insistence of his publishers. Unfortunately, the film doubles the jarring changes in tone. For most of the running length it is in mood, whilst not quite a breezy rom-com (there's something darker about it), at least comic in tone and genre. The characters are largely comic characters. And then just before the end, it hammers on a tragic deus-ex-machina ending involving an out-of-control dog, a herd of cows and a serial adulterer (which is nowhere near as funny as it sounds). Then to compound matters they try to cover this up with a sticking plaster happy ending, so everybody ends up with the right person (albeit for all the wrong reasons).

All of which is a real shame as up until that point the film had been bright, witty, sharp and a lot fun. The eponymous heroine (Gemma Arterton), a columnist for the Independant, returns to the village of her childhood. Here she finds herself torn between three men - her childhood sweetheart and village hunk Andy (Luke Evans) who is also shagging the village's Australian barmaid; local author and serial adulterer Nicholas, whose long-suffering wife Beth (Tamsin Greig) is unwittingly and slowly winning the affections of gentle American academic Glen (Bill Camp); and rock musician Ben, who is also the object of affection of a teenage fan/stalker (Jessica Barden) whose actions set in motion most of the plot elements.

Which all sounds like a bad episode of Emmerdale, but some great performances, a sharp script and gorgeous locations lift this into a highly watchable a very entertaining comedy. That is, until the third act car-crash.

Overall - 6.5/10 A well-above average film let down by a doubly jarring ending. Still worth watching, but not as good as it could have been.