Curate of Curiosities

Now that we've had a rather extensive introduction to this comic, the best thing to do would be to go further in depth. Unfortunately, as mentioned before, many of the subsequent volumes are unavailable, so in lieu of that, there's something special that I would like to discuss.

First, I'd like to draw your attention to the image above. It's a screenshot from the page for volume 1 on Dupuis' website.

And here's Google Play's thumbnail for the same volume.

You may ask, why would this comic have two different logos?

After a bit more searching on my end, the answer soon became obvious. In 2016, a live action movie based on the comic was released, directed by Alexandre Castagnetti.

Let me tell you, searching for info on this movie was a bit trickier than I expected. When I tried to look up "tamara 2016 film", the first thing I came across was some Venezuelan movie about a transsexual lawyer, so I thought, "Damn, they sure took a lot of liberties with this comic," before immediately realizing that this wasn't the movie I was looking for.

Here's the (translated) synopsis:

Tamara, 15, complexed with her curves, decided its entry into second to get rid of the label of “big”. To shut up the gossip, she made a bet with her best friend to go out with the first boy who pass the classroom door. No luck, the boy turns out to be Diego, the most handsome guy of high school. The bet is complicated for Tamara … Between the dirty tricks of the mean girls of high school, a mother hen, boards “drag” his little sister, Tamara is a memorable year!

Wow! If this is the quality for the official translation, than I may have a chance after all!

Now, let's have a look at the poster...

Oh. Oh no.

First thing to notice: the logo for the movie is indeed different from that used for the comics up to this point. Plus, as you can see above, not only did Dupuis go on to use said logo for subsequent volumes of the comic, but reprinted earlier volumes with that logo.

Second, and most important; you know how the very first thing that was revealed about our heroine was her measurements, particularly her 43-inch waistline? You know how the comic takes every opportunity it gets to remind us exactly how much she weighs? Well, here, the makers of this movie have done the unthinkable, and casted a lead actress who, just by looking at her, doesn't even come close!

Just to top things off, here's the trailer:

The website Branchés Culture had this to say on the issue:

In the series "Everything's okay in the wonderful world of French cinema" [...] France's wonderful and popular movie industry adapts Tamara, the very pleasant, pudgy heroine of Zidrou and Darasse's comic of the same name. Except, like usual, the first images from the movie make a complete mockery of the comic, its spirit, and the audience (whether that of comics or movies). How much will film sacrifice for outdated standards?
[...]
Yes, thanks to the leadership of director Alexandre Castagnetti (the great troubadour of La chanson du dimanche and the director of the not too bad Grimoire d'Arkandias) but just as certain due to a production full of glitz and sparkle for the sake of a perfect and unblemished image, look how Tamara has slimmed down.
[...]
Even so, Tamara is a symbol. That of a girl who's comfortable in her time period, in her skin (not at the start, but more and more as the series went on) and in her flesh. A symbol which drives away complexes and invites us to be at ease in our own skin, to express the freedom to be what you want, whether small, big, or somewhere in between.

However, it looks like someone noticed the obvious discrepancy between the actress and the character she's adapting, and tried to make some effort to fix it. From the film's official Twitter account:

Unfortunately for whoever was responsible for managing the account, the replies were unimpressed:

There were no actresses with a suitable figure? Shocking...

No need for this deception, you would have done better to take someone with the proper figure from the start.

Nice effort! But it's not enough to resemble the comic's heroine.

At what moment did you think this was all right? And you're bragging about it, no less. Wow, what a performance.

To be fair, it's not like it was all for nothing; look at the trailer above and you can see that she's noticeably wider than the rest of the cast.

Plus, at least they tried to make the lead character recognizable to her comic counterpart, which is more than can be said for a few other characters.

First, you have Diego, a character who is introduced in later volumes.

He's a dark-skinned Latino in the comic, yet, in a similarly egregious manner as with Tamara, the movie casts the slightly-tan-at-best Rayane Bensetti to play him.

Next, you have Wagner. In the comic, he's a pimply, rat-faced ginger, so who else does the film cast for the role than a YouTuber with none of those traits.

According to Wikipedia, the movie had a budget of $7 million, yet only made $5.6 million on release. Furthermore, it gained a rather frosty critical reception, with an average rating of 5.5 on IMDB, so it looks like this controversy may have ended up hurting the movie after all. Not that that stopped it from getting a sequel in 2018, though.

Controversy aside, everything I've seen about this movie makes it out to be a generic, bog-standard teen flick, so I have no intention of watching it. I would like to point out, however, that a special album was published to promote the movie, consisting of preexisting material from the comic. For some reason, this album was at some point readily available on Google Play.

Since the next available volume in the main series is volume 11, released nearly a decade after the last volume we did, and since I don't want to deal with a significant gap on this site, there is only one way to move forward with this.