Tamara Drewe
“Tamara came home looking different. The village hasn't changed nearly enough.”
Director
Stephen Frears
Release
10 September 2010
Runtime
111 Minutes
Certificate
15
Synopsis
Tamara Drewe returns to the Dorset village where she grew up after the death of her mother. Her childhood home needs to be prepared for sale, bringing her back into contact with people who remember a very different Tamara. Among them is Andy Cobb, who once had a relationship with her and still has ties to the property and surrounding countryside. Tamara's transformation immediately becomes village gossip. Her complicated romantic life soon supplies plenty more. She becomes involved with Ben Sergeant, a successful rock musician whose presence particularly fascinates teenage locals Jody and Casey. At nearby Stonefield writers' retreat, meanwhile, author Nicholas Hardiment enjoys the appearance of literary respectability while repeatedly betraying his wife Beth. As romances, affairs, jealousy, and teenage interference collide, the village's supposedly peaceful surface begins to fall away. BFI describes Tamara's return as awakening destructive passions within the village, while Cineuropa notes the story's connection to Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd.
The Movie Trailer
Tamara Drewe is a sharp British comedy about desire, jealousy and disruption arriving in a quiet Dorset village in the shape of someone everybody thought they already knew.
Tamara grew up locally, but the woman who returns to sell her late mother's house bears little resemblance to the awkward girl many residents remember.
Now a successful journalist, confident and impossible to ignore, Tamara's arrival quickly unsettles the carefully maintained lives around her.
There's Andy, an old flame whose feelings never completely disappeared.
There's rock drummer Ben Sergeant, whose celebrity makes him irresistible to two bored local teenagers.
And nearby lives successful crime novelist Nicholas Hardiment, whose comfortable marriage to Beth is considerably less secure than it appears.
Tamara doesn't deliberately set out to destroy anybody's life.
She simply returns home.
Everything else was already waiting to fall apart.
THE RETURN
Everybody Remembers the Old Tamara
Coming home means confronting people who still believe they know who you are.
Tamara's problem is that the village remembers a version of her she no longer recognises.
Her return immediately changes how old relationships work.
People stare.
People gossip.
And some begin rewriting their own memories.
Tamara may have changed physically, but the bigger disruption comes from the confidence to decide what she wants rather than accepting the identity everybody else assigned to her.
STONEFIELD
The Quiet Countryside Is Anything but Quiet
Stonefield presents itself as a place where writers can escape distraction.
Yet the supposedly peaceful countryside surrounding it is filled with affairs, resentment and frustrated ambition.
Nicholas Hardiment's public image is particularly fragile.
He appears successful and established.
Behind that reputation is a marriage repeatedly damaged by his behaviour.
Tamara doesn't create the cracks in this community.
Her arrival simply makes them easier to see.
DESIRE
Everybody Wants Somebody They Probably Shouldn't
Almost every important relationship in Tamara Drewe is shaped by wanting something just beyond reach.
Andy wants Tamara.
Jody wants Ben.
Nicholas wants almost anybody except the woman waiting for him at home.
And Tamara herself isn't always sure whether what attracts her is what will actually make her happy.
That makes the film less about one glamorous woman turning a village upside down than a group of people discovering how unstable their lives already were.