Page 24 - Fujifilm Exposure_48 Tamara Drewe_ok

TAMARA DREWE
“...YOU WANTED SOMEBODY WHO WAS GOING TO BE AT THE SERVICE OF THE FILM.”
Yet the choice of stock evidently adds greatly to the look of a film that – apart from its various other charms – sells its West Country setting wonderfully.
Davis selected the 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 400T, ETERNA 250D and Reala 500D to help tell this story of the eponymous Tamara (Gemma Arterton), the once gawky teenager now returned to her native village as a head-turning beauty.
These days a metropolitan journalist whose life is lived a world away from the rolling countryside of her youth, Tamara quickly excites the interest of three very different men.
Eagle-eyed viewers, and fans of Posy Simmonds’ original Guardian strip, will immediately see the parallels with Thomas Hardy’s Far From The Madding Crowd with this wilful heroine and her tangled romantic tribulations.
And of course in its Dorset setting, too. Transforming the area of West Dorset into a cinematic
vision that would take on a life of its ownthroughBenDavis’slensfellto production designer Alan Macdonald.
“I said to Stephen that I saw the village fundamentally as the kind of village you would look for if you were doing a period film. So rather than stripping out all the 21st century elements, I wanted to embellish it.
“It’s the modern rubbish that interested me in terms of design, like putting in a grotty old bus shelter and graffiti and contemporary graphics – 30 mph signs, rubbish bins outside houses, everything that you would cringe at and want to take out of a period shoot, I wanted to put in and add. My philosophy was to treat it as a period film and put in all the modern rubbish.”
Capturing the changing seasons in this environment was also key to expressing the shifting mood of a roster of diverse characters that extends beyond Tamara and her various suitors.
One part of the story features a residential writers’ retreat, run by Beth Hardiment (Tamsin Greig) and her wayward husband Nicholas (Roger Allam). Their home, a location near the village of Salwayash, required particularly close attention.
“The house we found was perfect for the groundwork we needed,” Macdonald adds, “but I felt it needed softeningontheexterior.Weput roses growing up the wall, a lot of plants around the garden and we totally replanted a vegetable patch to hide much more formal hedges.
“We were filming the end of the summer which we should have been filming six weeks earlier, so we had to add plastic colour everywhere,
which of course works in our favour because it doesn’t fade and won’t wilt during shooting.
“We painted the outbuildings, we’ve done up sheds, moved cows in, put up fencing. It’s the kind of film where I feel the design is obviously very important, but at the same time I wanted it to have a totally naturalistic feel.”
The result, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the camera department, has prompted Frears’ oft repeated (though slightly hyperbolic) claim that Dorset is the new Provence.
Certainly the good people of the Cannes Film Festival – where the film had a gala, out-of-competition screening – were beguiled by his funny, romantic, dramatic take on a re-imagined old classic.
“That’s what happens when everything works out,” he sighs. “When it doesn’t there’s nothing you can do, things just don’t gel in some way. I don’t know why one day they all blend in and the soufflé rises, it drivesyoumad.” ANWARBRETT
Tamara Drewe, to be released in the UK on September 10, was originated on 35mm Fujicolor ETERNA 400T 8583, ETERNA 250D 8563 and Reala 500D 8592
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Photo previous page: Gemma Arterton as Tamara Drewe; top: Dominic Cooper;
top left: Director Stephen Frears and DP Ben Davis at work;
above l-r: a scene from the film, Stephen Frears in reflective mood on set, Roger Allam and Tamsin Greig
22 • EXPOSURE • THE MAGAZINE • FUJIFILM MOTION PICTURE