Tamara Drewe (Stephen Frears, 2010)

I'm a big fan of Frears and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid will always be on my top 10. But this was a big disappointment I'm afraid. And after watching recent Loach it just seems that another of the old masters is loosing his touch.

It starts okay with always good Teorema premise about the stranger coming into closed community and fucking up their already fucked up relationships. But this just isn't Miike's Visitor Q I'm afraid. Community in question here is a bunch of middle class writers (I hate movies about middle class intellectuals) living in English countryside (I also hate movies taking place in the countryside in general).

But sometimes in the middle this sleeper takes another direction, more into romantic comedy type of shit. Because you have bunch of people of all ages, genders and occupations fucking and deceiving each other and in the middle of all this there are our two innocent main protagonist and it is so clear they were "made for each other". And - voila! - after some drama we get our happy end.

It's just a typical feminine romantic crap made for women, there's not much of Frears there. If you want to see seriously critical stuff about bored, too rich and artificial middle class "struggling" go see recent Mike Leigh's masterpiece Another Year. If you want to see bitter-sweet English comedy there are endless choices of great stuff starting with Frears's own Snapper, Van and so on. And if you just want to see some mindless romantic comedy, go for H'Wood crappy stuff. Those movies too have usually good looking young and fresh actress like Gemma Arterton undoubtedly is. But she alone is just not enough to save this almost two hours long more or less pointless movie.

3/10