The Girl With All The Gifts

‘The Girl With All The Gifts’ is adapted from the 2014 best-selling novel by Mike Carey who also had a hand in the screenplay alongside director Colm McCarthy.

The film opens with children being strapped into their chairs and being wheeled under armed military guard to their school classroom. Clearly in the future all truancy problems have been solved.

Well, not quite. What we have here is a futuristic tale that is a slight variant on the currently fashionable zombie film genre. The zombies which inhabit this world have been created by a fungal infection but act pretty much like your stereotypical zombie. e.g. see a human, chase it down and eat it.

However these children appear to be different. They were infected while still in the womb and evolved into a next generation who think more like humans but still have the overpowering desire to eat human flesh. 

The remaining 'real' humans have managed to stay safe from them by using blocking gel to mask the tantalising smell of their own flesh and, of course, by locking the children up while they try and find a way forward.

For Dr Caroline Caldwell (Glenn Close) the way forward is to find a vaccine and that is how Melanie (Sennia Nanua), seemingly the most intelligent of the bunch, eventually ends up strapped to the Dr’s examination table about to be chopped up in the name of science.

The group’s teacher, Helen Justineau (Gemma Arterton) prefers a different approach. She sees enormous potential in working with these children and when the military base where they are housed is overrun by the undead, she is the one who rescues Melanie.

A group of them are now on the run under the command of Sergeant Eddie Parks (Paddy Considine) who would rather just obliterate them all. Melanie repays her teacher’s kindness by helping the group stay safe by distracting the hordes of zombies who lurk in the streets.

Along the way they find out that the fungal infection will eventually move onto a second even more disastrous stage.

The film has an interesting concept but it’s problem is it really struggles to get this across and it’s very difficult to see where they are trying to go with the story. Although clearly it is trying to ask who is being the more humane... the humans or the new breed of zombies?

It also has the usual horror film problem of people doing nonsensical things and getting themselves killed. In this case, a soldier laying down his arms, his armour and his radio. Oops.

It’s not a bad film but I think it could clearly have been better. It’s also best avoided by cat and dog lovers. 

Gemma Bovery

'Gemma Bovery' is about a former publisher turned baker called Martin Joubert (Fabrice Luchini) who now lives in the Normandy village where his favourite novel, Flaubert's 'Madame Bovary', was set. When an English couple move into a crumbling cottage in the village and he is forced into early pleasantries when his dog runs into their garden to introduce itself to their pouch (as they do) he finds out to his astonishment that their surname is Bovery. This quickly brings to mind the aforementioned 19th century novel about the amorous adventures of a doctor's wife.

The ex-pat couple are Gemma (Gemma Arterton) and her crushingly dull husband Charlie (Jason Flemyng). As the couple accustom themselves to village life and learn French very well, Martin becomes obsessed with the beautiful but bored Gemma. Hardly surprising really when she spends most of the first half of the film orgasmically sniffing bread in his bakery.

The film itself is based on a graphic novel by Posy Simmonds who also produced Tamara Drewe which you may recall also starred Gemma Arteton and reworked another piece of famous literature in ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’.

Martin soon starts to believe that her life is mirroring that of the fictional Bovary particularly when he catches Gemma flirting with Hervé (Niels Schneider), a young student who should be revising for his law degree but (understandably) would rather spends time working on his English. He is frequently seen naked helping Gemma relive her boredom although she manages to remain clothed the whole time (must be a contract thing).

Martin assumes this will all end badly for Gemma just as the book does and he tries to intervene in matters but his help only further complicates her love life as does the arrival of her ex Patrick (Mel Raido).

It is a pleasantly mixed language (English/French) affair with about 80% in French and subtitled. Only occasionally does it descend into cheesy chick flick territory such as when Gemma gets stung by a bee and asks her favourite baker to open her shirt and suck the poison out.

The ending is really quite clever and shot from several angles/points of view, the rest of the film less so but pleasant enough.

Tamara Drewe

Tamara Drewe was originally a weekly comic strip serial by Posy Simmonds in The Guardian. It is supposedly, loosely based on Thomas Hardy's nineteenth century study of country life, ‘Far from the Madding Crowd’ and ran for 110 episodes from September 2005 until October 2007. This was then released as a graphic novel in Nov 2007.



So take a dash of Thomas Hardy, add in Stephen Frears to direct it and then get Gemma Arterton to wear some really brief cut-off jeans and hey, you have an audience. Hmmm, I didn't expect to like this but at least I can check out Gemma’s rear.



After the death of her mother Tamara Drewe (Gemma Arterton), a young journalist working in London, returns to the Dorset village of her childhood, Ewedown. She intends renovate and sell her late mother's house and cash in on her inheritance.

The village, which is tranquil to the point of being in stupor, well that according to the two fifteen year old girls who inhabit the bus shelter there, Jody (Jessica Barden) and Casey (Charlotte Christie), has become a retreat for authors. A place where they can work on their stories in peace without the fear of anything exciting coming along to distract them. Novelist Nicholas Hardiment (Roger Allam) and wife Beth (Tasmin Greig) accommodate a bunk of these literary folk in their own home and what a desperately shallow and stereotypical lot they all are. Among these is an American called Glen (Bill Camp) who is struggling to get published with anything, let alone his current book on Thomas Hardy (naturally).

So when Tam’s Mini Cooper roars down the country lanes she shakes up everyone’s dull but happy (well apart from the teenagers) little world. She also turns a few heads; the once ugly duckling schoolgirl with a big nose is now a real stunner. Tam’s former boyfriend Andy Cobb (Luke Evans) isn’t impressed though, he’s not impressed with her nose job or her new glammed up image but then he once got his leg over the old version. He has a point. Any girl can buy herself a new nose but presumably that cute rear end is all her own work. To which all eyes are drawn as she climbs over a stile in nothing but a skimpy top and an even skimpier pair of cut-off jeans.



Still, Andy is happy to work on her house for her, whilst Tam starts work on a novel about herself. A touch vain perhaps but she appears to be exorcising ghosts as well. Tam’s father walked out on her and her mother as a child and she says she got the nose job to feel better about herself.



Whilst she’s ‘home’ she also continues her journalist work and heads off to a local music festival to interview one of the members of the band ‘Swipe’. Her interview with their drummer Ben Sargeant (Dominic Cooper) takes place in her kitchen, at first, but quickly moves upstairs to the bedroom.



He moves in along with his dog, which has a liking for chasing cows, and when he proposes marriage she accepts, even though he quickly grows bored with the countryside and longs to return to take Tam back to London with him.

This is bad news for one of the teenage girls. Jody is hopelessly in lust with Ben and will stop at nothing to keep him in Ewedale where it’s easier to fantasise about him. She lets herself into Tam’s house and starts interfering with her emails. The two girls seemingly hate ‘Plastic Fantastic’ as they have christened Tamara but are none the less obsessed with her.



‘Writers are just thieves and liars’ so says Nicholas Hardiment to his literary fan club and he should know. His wife entertains them for him whilst he’s out cheating on her with other women. When Tam’s relationship with Ben implodes, Nicholas, who the film gives the impression that Tam had a thing for when she was a teenager but got knocked back, moves in. He catches her at a low point and they embark on an unlikely affair. She’s obviously a very flawed girl is our Tam. Girl, you spent all that money on your nose just to be another notch on the rock star bedpost and then to shag a serial philander twice your age. Good call. Plastic surgery will get you everywhere...



As I said I didn't expect to like this but after a slow start, where the film seemed to wander around a bit wondering which plot line to follow, it settled down and became pleasantly entertaining. It’s clever in parts, funny in others. It’s not laugh out loud funny, which is fine with me, as I don't like comedies anyway and it’s actually surprisingly perceptive. Well up to the dreadful ending that is, which is one of those all too common neat and tidy ones, that’s ends up tarring the film with a stroke of the Rom Com brush.

Plus, I hate happy endings. At least, Nicolas got was coming to him but the graphic novel also killed off Jody. Dead in her bed clutching a can of computer cleaner apparently. My sort of ending but perhaps the 15 certificate couldn’t stomach that. Which means our underage stalker is there for the finale, as she finally gets close to her hero Ben. Then as she comforts him over the death of his dog, the film plays out with Swipe’s ‘Jailbait Jody’. The dark humour of which is probably lost on a lot of the audience who leave as soon as the credits start to roll.

So plastic surgery will get you everywhere... well, seemingly back where you started with the guy who didn’t mind the old you, the old nose... who basically always accepted you for what you are. Perhaps that’s the moral of the story.