What if "Jerry Maguire" wasn't about Jerry Maguire, "Michael Clayton" not about Michael Clayton or "Erin Brockovich" not about  "Erin Brockovich?" 

Those wouldn't make sense, but one of the great things about "Tamara Drewe" (2010) is that it isn't all about her. Sure, she's a fine character - an attractive, young London journalist, returned to the country home of her mother. She is much changed, thanks to a nose job, and not just in her appearnce. But showing up again stirs up the countryside. Even the handsome but taciturn handy Andy Cobb gets his Wellingtons in a state over her.

Through Drewe is a big piece of the movie named for her, other characters make claims that the story is theirs. There is Cobb, who yearns for Tamara and the ancestral home that his family lost. Glen is the American scholar who has lost confidence in his writing and his ability to love. Beth is the woman who coddles her unfaithful husband and keeps Stonefield -- their farm and writers' retreat -- running. Nicholas is the philandering husband, a writer of popular mysteries. And there are others.

My favorite, truly, is the 15-year-old village girl. Angry about how she and her mother were abandoned by her  father and bored out of her adolescent mind, Jody says nearly everything with a sneer, even when dreaming aloud of shagging rock star, teen magazine idol Ben Sergeant.. She may sound dreadful, but I found her hilarious. Freckled actress Jessica Barden steals multiple scenes as Jody and blusters her way into my heart and, eventually, finds a way into her idol's arms -- though maybe not in the way she imagined.

Jody's a spark of a secondary character in a movie based on a graphic novel. The same description applies to Kim Pine, the smoldering drummer in "Scott Pilgrim vs. The World," although Jody is as loudly opinionated as Pine is moodily quiet. (Except when Pine yells, "We are Sex Bob-omb!") Jody's sharpness is slightly dulled by a minor propensity on the part of the writers to fill her angry lips with teen clichés, such as when she accuses her mother of ruining her life.

While her mother ruins Jody's life, everyone else seems set on ruining their own, with often inappropriate romances. There's Beth and Nicholas. There's Ben with Tamara. Tamara with Nicholas. Cobb with the local pub maid. Ben with his ex-girlfriend. Maybe even Glen with Beth.

This game of musical hearts may have been borrowed from Thomas Hardy, who inspired Posy Simmonds in the writing of the graphic novel "Tamara Drewe." At the beginning, we see that Beth and Nicholas operate a writers' retreat advertised as "Far from the madding crowd," the title of Hardy's fourth book. Glen's scholarship is on Hardy. Hardy's plot includes situations of love and betrayal that appear to have been borrowed for "Tamara Drewe."

Don't worry, though. You don't have to know English Lit, or even Lit Lite, to enjoy this. It's a lovely breezy film that's good enough to have been a bigger hit. It probably would've been, had director Stephen Frears cast Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Keira Knightley in place of Tamsin Greig, Roger Allam and Gemma Arterton. As it is, it's a roster of good actors I hope we see more of.