Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A young newspaper writer returns to her hometown in the English countryside, where her childhood home is being prepped for sale.
Tamara Drewe is a pleasantly mounted British rural comedy adapted from Posy Simmonds' graphic novel (itself a riff on Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd), but it never quite coheres. The ensemble is capable — Gemma Arterton is appealing in the lead and Roger Allam is a standout as the pompous writer — but the film struggles to decide whose story it's really telling. Stephen Frears directs competently with attractive countryside visuals, though nothing cinematically distinctive. The Hardy-pastiche concept gives it some novelty on paper, but the execution feels scattered and the tonal shifts between farce and tragedy are awkward. The ending in particular feels rushed and unsatisfying, failing to land the emotional or comedic payoffs the film has been building toward.