Following the success of Four Weddings and a Funeral, this prettified period piece came as something of a shock to fans of Hugh Grant's foppish Four Weddings hero. He plays a prudish clergyman whose first task in his new Australian parish is to prevent bohemian artist Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill) from exhibiting both his models and his portraits of them. Director John Duigan contents himself with a few gentle barbs and elegant bons mots, but rather loses his way once Grant's less inhibited wife, Tara FitzGerald, joins Elle Macpherson and her fellow poseurs. Visually pleasing, but films of this sort need to be more than just something to look at.

In 1930s Australia, Anglican clergyman Anthony Campion and his prim wife, Estella, are asked to visit noted painter Norman Lindsay, whose planned contribution to an international art exhibit is considered blasphemous. While Campion and Lindsay debate, Estella finds herself drawn to the three beautiful models sitting for the painter's current work, freethinking Sheela, sensual Pru and virginal Giddy.