1920s love story based on the Somerset Maugham novel of the same name. Kitty (Naomi Watts) has married middle class doctor Walter (Edward Norton) for all the wrong reasons. When the couple relocates to Shanghai, she begins an affair with a local diplomat. When Walter finds out, he takes a job in a remote, cholera-stricken Chinese village as an act of vengeance. Can a cure be found for the disease - or their troubled relationship?