Tamara Drewe

I'm afraid I noticed that this film existed for the obvious reason - Gemma Arterton in those hot pants, photos  which conveniently made the rounds during Cannes festival earlier this year. I'd never seen any of the films she's been in (James Bond - yawn. Clash of the Titans - groan. Prince of Persia - snore. RocknRolla - vomit) until yesterday night, but I'm guessing that Tamara Drewe is Arterton's career highlight by a long shot. Because it's great.

The poster and the plot synopsis (young journalist returns to hometown of her childhood and wreaks havoc among locals) is actually misleading, because it distracts from the fact that it is actually Tamsin Greig's character Beth, and Jessica Barden's mouthy 14-year-old, lovestruck Jody (on the left), who drive the film along and cause all the havoc. Arterton's character, I have to say, I pretty much hated. Young, beautiful, successful, with a massive house in the country and the obligatory Apple work station, all the while complaining how tough it is to be beautiful AND smart. Because nobody takes you seriously. Why yes, shit, I can't believe you make it out of bed in the morning. Anyway, that isn't to say that Arterton is putting in a bad performance - she's very good. As is almost everyone, in fact.

Dominic Cooper's Ben Sergeant is blatantly modelled on Yannis from Foals (although when I asked him about it he wouldn't directly admit to it, just said that he knows a few people in bands), and I found him a bit too overdrawn at the beginning. But during the Q&A afterwards, him and the other actors said how much they'd enjoyed playing people who were comic book characters, i.e. characters who were (over)drawn.

Beth and Jody, the long-suffering wife of a successful, lecherous author and a teenager bored to death by life in the village, provide most of the laughs. We see Beth wearing an impressive number of aprons, and making and fixing things. When she says, after an argument with her husband, that "it's all falling apart", we get a first glimmer of the unhappiness she's lived with and which could erupt any minute.

Jody, on the other hand, has her life in front of her, but is already scared that "nothing will ever happen" to her. So she tries to make stuff happen - throwing eggs, breaking into houses, fantasising about sleeping with rock stars. It doesn't sound like a huge character, but she's by far the most lovable and funny figure in this film.

What I also enjoyed were details like the skull & crossbones dog tag on Ben's beloved dog 'Boss', and the awful/amazing 'surfer dog' T-shirt worn by the hapless American author Glen, who seems unable to view the writing process via a metaphor other than digestion. I could go on about how much I liked the way writers are portrayed in the film (not very sympathetically), but I'll make do with saying that this was, as a straight up film (not qualified to comment on the adaption of the respective comic books), better than Scott Boring vs The World. Peace out.


Photo credit: Empire Movies