Pretty. Vacant.
Director: Stephen Frears
Writers: Posy Simmonds (graphic novel), Moira Buffini (screenplay)
Stars: Gemma Arterton, Luke Evans and Dominic Cooper
Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton) is a columnist from London who returns home to Dorset to renovate and sell her family home. In so-doing she encounters a supporting cast of the most hackneyed characters imaginable; there is the strong, handsome and moral young farmer (Luke Evans), the skinny-jeaned, eyeliner-wearing indie rockstar (Dominic Cooper), the mischievous schoolgirls who obsess over him (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie), the brilliant but conceited, philandering author and his acquiescent, kindly wife (Roger Allam and Tamsin Greig), the token American, who served little purpose other than as a bridging character between the US audience and this foreign land (Bill Camp) and finally the barmaid – bet you can’t guess her nationality, yep, she’s an Aussie, stunningly original – (Josie Taylor).
You can probably guess where I’m going with this one. The lesson I have now learnt is never to watch a film just for Gemma Arterton or because its eponymous heroine shares your surname (albeit with a superfluous ‘e’). This latter point seems not to have alluded Frears, who has made a film whose sole purpose seems to be to showcase a very attractive young actress. Tamara is no more than a submissive sex object in this film and despite making a pop-feministic statement along the lines of: “No one takes me seriously now that I’m good looking” does nothing to prove that she is in possession of anything other than high cheekbones and red lipstick.
The film is funny, in parts, ridiculous in many, and is fine if you want to turn your brain off for an hour and a half and look at pretty people frolicking around in fields of cows or in ‘quaint’ [shudder] thatch-roofed English cottages. I suppose any film whose principle actors include Gemma Arterton and Dominic Cooper is never going to be one for the ages. The star of the film, without a doubt, was Boss, the boxer dog, played wonderfully by Albert Clark, who won the Palm Dog award at Cannes.
As a parting note, the biggest shock in what was a terribly banal film, was to see James Naughtie, serious political journalist of Today programme (and spoonerism) fame, making a bizarre cameo as an interviewer. Oh James...
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