Fragile, bird-like Oscar (Ralph Fiennes) grows up in a 19th century Devon village, the only son of a widowed naturalist. Embittered by grief, Oscar's father imposes a puritanical religiousity on his son that erupts into violence on a "pagan" and "popish" Christmas Day when he catches Oscar eating the "fruit of Satan," Christmas pudding. The steel underlying Oscar's gentleness shows itself in the 15-year-old's decision to turn his back on his father and answer God's call by taking Anglican orders.

"The Odd Bod," as he is known at Oxford, then takes to gambling in the simple faith that God means him to earn money, which he then gives to others in need. Half a world away, another gambler of a very different sort, makes her own name as an eccentric. Lucinda Leplastrier, played with bright-eyed ferocity by Cate Blanchett, is a young heiress recently orphaned, who scandalizes Australian society with her bloomers, short hair, and headstrong independence. She finds an outlet for her passionate nature running a glassworks she purchases with the help of a newly-befriended Reverend Dennis Hasset. Escaping to Britain when their relationship falters, Lucinda encounters Oscar on the return voyage to Sydney. Though Oscar is guiltily fleeing a gambling addiction in the self-assigned purgatory of New South Wales, the pleasure he and Lucinda find as gambling co-conspirators fuels much of the subsequent plot development.

Scandal and misunderstanding bedevil Oscar and Lucinda's relationship, yet an unlooked-for love grows between them despite Oscar's sometimes excruciating awkwardness.

Surprisingly faithful to Carey's intricate novel, Oscar and Lucinda falters only in its foreshortening of Lucinda's transformation, particularly in its departure from Carey's scripting of her destiny. Oscar's agonizing self-interrogation is brilliantly explored by Fiennes who nuances his character with all the sensitivity, naivete and tragic blindness of Carey's invention.