Hardly Hardy but good enough.By John DeSando, "It's Movie Time," "Cinema Classics," and "On the Marquee"
"Writers are thieves and liars." Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam)
Tamara Drewe is a hodpodge of genres: Melodrama, farce, and tragedy play blissfully in the Dorset countryside of England. The major characters are writers of some sort converging on an old estate cum writers' colony to write in the right atmosphere. Bread Loaf Writers' Conference wouldn't be too far off except that Vermont is but a cousin to the resplendent land of Thomas Hardy, a constant presence in this complex but rewarding little film that mirrors broadly his equally turbid Far from the Madding Crowd.
The film spins around the adulterous activity of the successful novelist, Hardiment, with the famous eponymous journalist (Gemma Arterton), whose profligate romances ignite the small town of Ewedown, Dorset, while she is attempting to sell the ancestral home. Laced throughout this melodrama is the thematic commentary on the role of writers, who chronicle our uneven lives through the prism of their own insecurities and inexperiences. No one is exceptional when it comes to weaknesses and imperfections.
The level, enduring rural life is best represented by the townsfolk, who occasionally get enmeshed in the soap opera shenanigans but prevail over the artists and parvenus who float through the village society. As at least one critic has pointed out, the two teens, Jody Long and Casey Shaw (Jessica Barden and Charlotte Christie), who cause trouble for the adults out of their small-town boredom, serve as a Greek chorus commenting on their own hopes for deliverance by a celebrated rock drummer, Ben Sergeant (Dominic Cooper), visiting the town, and delivering their own brand of comeuppance (dues ex machine) for the foolish adults, almost all of whom are served their just desserts.
Thomas Hardy's melodramatic, romantic spirit enfolds this drama. I'd be remiss if I did not mention I spent some time in Dorset riding a bicycle to various Hardy novels' landmarks. I was transfixed by the beauty of the landscape and the romantic aura in the smallest church or copse. Director Stephen Frears gets it right as he did in Local Hero.
Tamara Drewe is born of the chaos of a graphic novel and cradled by Hardy's hard romanticism. Out of the world of fiction come truths often contradictory but nonetheless true, frequently influenced by the vicissitudes of fate:
"It is safer to accept any chance that offers itself, and extemporize a procedure to fit it, than to get a good plan matured, and wait for a chance of using it." Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd.
John DeSando co-hosts It's Movie Time, Cinema Classics, and On the Marquee for WCBE 90.5. The shows can be heard streaming at http://publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/ppr/index.shtml and on demand at http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wcbe/arts.artsmain Contact him at JDeSando@Columbus.RR.com