Based on the title alone, one would think that this movie was primarily about a woman named Tamara Drewe. And while Tamara (Gemma Arterton) is nominally the lead, and her story is the one we’re perhaps meant to care most about, Tamara Drewe is actually a very well-balanced ensemble piece, filled with a solid half-dozen characters who command just as much attention and interest as our titular heroine.

Posy Simmonds graphic novel, on which the film is based, is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd; but don’t worry if nineteenth century rural British novels aren’t really your thing. Hardy’s story provides the barest framework for Simmonds’ thoroughly modern re-imagining — the swashbuckling military sergeant from the book, for instance, here becomes an eyeliner-wearing emo rock star.

Drewe herself is a young journalist, with vaguely literary aspirations — as much as Drewe has any firm aspirations at all. She’s somewhat adrift, often more than willing to follow the whims of the men who are attracted to her. Her tendency to fall for flattery is a result of an attention-starved childhood spent as the ugly duckling — a duckling who’s grown into a beautiful swan (if swans could squeeze themselves into skin-tight denim booty shorts) thanks to a rhinoplasty that reduced a nose of epic proportions down to a button.