Desperate Remedies 1993

Hope, New Britannia—a beleaguered nineteenth-century New Zealand town that seems to be slipping toward ruin—serves as the backdrop for a tangled web of love, loyalty, and power. Dorothea Brook, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, runs a shop and designs dresses, trying to shield her feckless, opium-addicted sister Rose, Kiri Mills, from her former lover, Fraser, Cliff Curtis, whose pull still haunts them. Dorothea also carries a passionate, concealed bond with Anne Cooper, Lisa Chappell, even as she feels drawn to the newcomer and former radical Lawrence Hayes, Kevin Smith.

Clay-hard ambitions intrude when MP and war profiteer William Poyser, Michael Hurst, fixes his gaze on Dorothea’s business and property, hoping marriage will stabilize his faltering career. The three-way tension among Dorothea, Anne, and Lawrence swells into a painful triangle, which comes to a temporary, uneasy halt when Lawrence agrees to marry Rose as a practical measure to remove her from Fraser’s orbit. Rose is driven to ruin by opium, and a confrontation aboard a vessel leaves Lawrence and Fraser missing, presumed dead, while Dorothea finds herself coerced into a marriage with Poyser.

Two years drift by. Fraser returns, and so does Lawrence, reigniting old flames and new reckonings. In a climactic moment at the opera, a mise-en-abyme echo of Fraser’s death plays out, revealing that the veiled assailant is Anne, not Dorothea. With this truth clear, Dorothea chooses her heart and leaves Poyser to face the consequences of his financial mismanagement and gambling debts. Lawrence watches them depart from the dock, while Dorothea and Anne are last seen at the vessel’s helm, entwined in a final, intimate embrace as Hope recedes behind them.