We guess you already had a chance to hear about Gemma Arterton cast as title character in movie adaptation of Posy Simmonds's comic strip about a beautiful columnist who ruffles feathers in a rural writers' retreat.
Today, we are here to write about this quite interesting movie, Tamara Drewe, directed by Stephen Frears, that will also have a place at Cannes Film Festival 2010, although in Out of Competition screening.
If this story doesn't sound familiar to you, let us remind you that Tamara Drewe is a weekly comic strip serial by Posy Simmonds published in The Guardian's Review section.
The strip is based upon a modern reworking of Thomas Hardy's nineteenth century novel Far from the Madding Crowd.
And here is the official synopsis: “Tamara Drewe has transformed herself. Plastic surgery, a different wardrobe, a smouldering look, have given her confidence and a new and thrilling power to attract, which she uses recklessly. Often just for the fun of it. People are drawn to Tamara Drewe, male and female.
In the remote village where her late mother lived Tamara arrives to clear up the house. Here she becomes an object of lust, of envy, the focus of unrequited love, a seductress. To the village teenagers she is ‘plastic-fantastic', a role model. Ultimately, when her hot and indiscriminate glances lead to tragedy, she is seen as a man-eater, a heartless marriage wrecker, a slut.”
So, lovely Gemma Arterton, that we all remember from titles like Clash of the Titans and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time plays Tamara Drewe, a woman who raises the temperature when she arrives at a writers' retreat in a quiet country village.
Well, we have no problem to imagine Arterton in this kind of role, she's almost perfect for this type of character, right? Maybe that's exactly why Frears, who directed The Queen (which won an Oscar for Helen Mirren), told his producers he wants Gemma to play Tamara from beggining, a newspaper columnist who just happens to be a knock-out beauty.
This movie also stars Dominic Cooper, Roger Allam, Luke Evans, Bill Camp and Tamsin Greig.
We're leaving you now to enjoy the first image of Gemma Arteron as Tamara Drewe. Remember that Gemma Arterton will be giving the Cannes Film Festival some heat at the festival's fabled red steps, so stay tuned!
