Tamara Drewe

Tamara Drewe

This is a delightful frolicking film. If you take it seriously and start to analyze the action you probably will not enjoy it. It is much like an English version of Desperate Housewives but I like this much better.

It takes place in the English countryside. Beth runs a writers’ retreat on her farm. The rolling hills and calm pastures make a perfect background for all the frivolous, antics that place on the farm and in the area.

I adored watching Beth mix up the biscuits for afternoon tea, prepare breakfasts and dinners without even looking tired. She also attended to the farm and edited her writer husband’s works. She was caring and giving to all the writers in residence as well as to her husband.

Her husband has a roving eye. There always seems to be a mistress hanging on. He leaves her, begs forgiveness and then moves on the next one. What a cad! I really enjoyed the scene where Beth shows up at one her husband’s readings. In front of all the audience she asks him where he got the information for the adultery in the story.

All the residents at the retreat are characters. It is such fun being a voyeur at the dinner table listening to them chat away.

Two cheeky brazen young school girls provide a lot of humor in the story. It is almost as if they are telling the tale. They continuously hide behind walls and watch all the goings and comings in this quiet seemingly pastoral boring community. Their only action seems to be throwing eggs at passing cars.

Of course there has to be a handsome gentleman in the picture. He works on the farm and tends to the cattle. He longs for his ancestral home that is a country house nearby. It was somehow lost to the family and now is owned by the Tamara Drewe family.

Enter Tamara Drewe. She is currently a journalist for a big city paper. Her mother has died and she comes back to sell the family house. Tamara has blossomed into a beautiful young sexy woman. She wears short shorts( really short) and knows how to flirt. She used to be an ugly duckling but time has worked in her favor. The hired hand had a relationship with her in the past and obviously still cares for her.

Tamara has a series of relationships. The ‘peeping tom girls’ look on at all the action. Beth gets fed up with her carousing husband.

There are twists and turns and a surprising ending.

I delighted in the film and just smiled all the way through.

Posy Simmonds wrote the book (with the same title) that was serialized in the Guardian in 2005.The book was based on the Thomas Hardy book, Far From The Madding Crowd. I now feel compelled to go back and re- read that book.