Review of Tamara Drewe (2010) by Jennetp — 24 Feb 2011

A solidly middling Stephen Frears film--not a masterpiece like "Laundrette" or "Liaisons" or "High Fidelity," but not a bomb like "Mary Reilly." In "Tamara Drewe," we see familiar strengths on display: fully fleshed characters navigating minefields of desire with consequences alternately dire and ridiculous.

But something about the film seems a little stale. Familiar stories abound: e.g. the ugly duckling who becomes a swan; the adulterous writer who claims art as his license; Far from the Madding Crowd.

A third of the way in, it's clear who will get a happy ending--and why and with whom. Snore. For me, however, two 15-year-old troublemakers save the film from mawkishness. Whether egging cars or dabbling in more serious crime, their desperate boredom reveals a dark side to country living, and the film makes them, at once, perfectly appalling and enormously sympathetic.

Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie are wonderful as the teenagers, sharing an appetite for an imagined life elsewhere but otherwise very different. And it's smart and ironic that so many plot developments issue from their meddling, given their limited understanding of what they do.

All in all, "Tamara Drewe" kept me engaged as I was watching, but I didn't have much to chew on afterward.