Director: Stephen Frears
Starring: Gemma Arterton, Roger Allam, Bill Camp and Dominic Cooper
Distributor: Roadshow Films
Runtime: 111 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: Coarse language, sex scenes, sexual references, violence and mature themes

For over 40 years, director Stephen Frears has been surprising audiences with the range of his films, from Gumshoe to My Beautiful Laundrette, from Dangerous Liaisons to The Queen. According to his comments, this time he surprised himself. While the credits say the film is based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds (which itself took its cue from Thomas Hardy’s also Dorset-set Far From the Madding Crowd), Frears keeps saying that he was making a film from a comic strip.

And so it is and despite this background, some of the characters are much more rounded out and developed than is possible in a comic strip.

Roger Allam and Tamsin Grieg (two noted British stage actors) are Nicholas and Beth who run a haven for writers, he writing his own novels and getting the money, she working the farm and being a kind hostess. The trouble is that Nicholas has a wandering eye and she always forgives him. When she asks him publicly about why he is unfaithful, he replies that she lets him.

Then Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arteton) returns home – with a nose job that has transformed her adolescent looks. She is insecure and begins a liaison with Ben, a group drummer (Dominic Cooper), and is not against other affairs until it all comes to a head. In the foreground is Andy (Luke Evans) who is redecorating her house (which was his family’s old house) and works the farm for Beth. In the background is American Glenn (Bill Camp) who is writing an academic book on Hardy but who is encouraged to write for a more down to earth audience by Beth.

And always there are two bored 15 year olds who cause mischief, talk sex as they read their magazines and have a thing for Ben, which leads to some stalking, house invasion and inappropriate emails and – tongue-in-cheek – the resolution comes about when Ben’s dog chases the cows in a Dorset stampede and a key character is trampled to death. But, as you might guess from what has gone on, he deserved it.

Rather slight but frequently funny and always quite amusing.