Desperate Remedies (film)

Jennifer WardLealand Kevin Smith Lisa Chappell

Set in Hope, New Britannia, an overwrought nineteenth century New Zealand community seemingly on the edge of destruction, Dorothea Brooke WardLealand is a shopkeeper and dress designer with a troubled past. She strives in vain to keep her feckless, opiumaddicted sister Rose out of the clutches of her former lover, Fraser Curtis. She is in a lesbian relationship with Anne Cooper Chappell but tempted by newcomer and former radical Lawrence Hayes Smith. MP and war profiteer William Poyser Hurst wants her business and property to shore up his tottering career, through marriage. Dorothea, Anne and Lawrence become enmeshed in a tortured triangle, resolved when Lawrence agrees to marry Rose for convenience and to get her away from Fraser. Rose dies ravaged from her opium addiction, although Lawrence and Fraser have fought a battle on board a vessel as passengers and both are missing, presumed dead. Dorothea has been coerced into accepting Poyser in marriage.Two years pass and Fraser returns, as does Lawrence. At an opera, a miseenabyme version of Frasers sudden death is replayed but the veiled female assailant turns out to be Anne, not Dorothea. Realising that Anne is her true love, Dorothea leaves Poyser to his fate, given the exposure of his financial mismanagement and gambling debts. Lawrence sees them off at the dock as they depart Hope, and Dorothea and Anne are last seen together at the vessels helm, embracing and arm in arm. ........

Source: Wikipedia