Tamara Drewe

Based on Posy Simmonds' beloved graphic novel of the same name this wittily modern take on the romantic English pastorale is a far cry from Hardy's Wessex. Tamara Drewe's present-day English countryside -- stocked with pompous writers, rich weekenders, bourgeois bohemians, a horny rock star, and a great many Buff Orpington chickens and Belted Galloway cows -- is a much funnier place. When Tamara Drewe sashays back to the bucolic village of her youth, life for the locals is thrown tail over teakettle. Tamara -- once an ugly duckling -- has been transformed into a devastating beauty (with help from plastic surgery). As infatuations, jealousies, love affairs and career ambitions collide among the inhabitants of the eighboring farmsteads, Tamara sets a contemporary comedy of manners into play sing the oldest magic in the book -- sex appeal.