Stephen Frears's witty film version of Posy Simmonds's graphic novel — itself a loose adaptation of Thomas Hardy's 1873 novel Far from the Madding Crowd — hews closely to its immediate source while lightening the tone and adding sly, Hardy-esque detail. The weak link is Tamara herself: Gemma Arterton (Hardy's Bathsheba Everdene) gets no help from the script as she tries to make her character more than a spoiled, vacant journalist who returns to her childhood home in Dorset to avenge herself on the men who spurned her. But there's ample compensation from Luke Evans as old flame Andy Cobb (Hardy's Shepherd Oak), Dominic Cooper as Swipe drummer Ben Sergeant (Hardy's Sergeant Troy), and Roger Allam as mystery-novelist Nicholas Hardiment (Hardy's Farmer Boldwood), plus Tamsin Greig as Nicholas's neglected wife, former ART stalwart Bill Camp as a nerdy Hardy scholar who comes into his own, and Jessica Barden as a Sergeant-obsessed teen. Throw in a broken nose, the email Valentine, the livestock stampede, and the dog that comes to a bad end and you have a film that does Simmonds justice and would make Hardy proud.
