The film opens with a group of primary school children in 1977, who have a Victoria State Central Bank representative, Mr.Johnson, who give them lessons on saving and give them the chance to open their first checking account, and telling them that if they will put in any money for 25 years, at the end they will eventually set aside $727,000. In the present, the Centa Bank's board of directors orders CEO Simon O'Reily to find a way to increase profits. Then he discovers the work of a mathematician, Jim Doyle, whose software B.T.S.E., based on fractal geometry of Benoit Mandelbrot makes it possible to predict stock market trends. Doyle is hired by O'Reily and supplied with the best computer hardware. He befriends Vincent, who had advised O'Reily to hire him, and enters into a relationship with his colleague Michelle Roberts, who views O'Reily's business activities critically. Meanwhile, the couple Diane and Wayne Davis, who took out a loan in a foreign currency at the bank, become insolvent. The son of the couple is found dead after a meeting with the deliverer of the eviction notice. The Davises hire a lawyer, Stephen O'Connor, to sue the bank on the grounds that they were not informed about the risks of a loan in foreign currency. Invited by O'Reily to a party at his house, Jim takes Michelle, she insults the landlord and the relationship between her and Jim is broken, because he is hiding something and don't want to open up with her. O'Reily asks Jim to change his attitude to him and their business and ask him as a proof of loyalty to falsely state in court that he was present as an intern in the bank's loan counseling to the Davises and that Wayne Davis was sufficiently informed. That causes the Davises to lose their lawsuit. This also causes the final breakup between Jim and Michelle; the latter then decides to investigate Jim's past. Jim informs his boss that a stock market crash will soon occur. Michelle finds out in Jim's hometown that his real name is not Jim Doyle but Paul Jackson; the bank had terminated his father's credit, whereupon his father committed suicide. A man who watches Michelle on behalf of O'Reily learns the truth and warns O'Reily. O'Reily wants to stop the bank's stock sale in that moment, but Wayne Davis breaks into O'Reily's house to shoot him. O'Reily offers him two million dollars if Davis allows him to make a phone call. Wayne realizes that it would be a very important call for the bank, so he destroys the house's power-box to stop this important phone call, which is intended to warn the bank of Jim's plans, and leaves the estate. Stock prices initially perform as expected, but then they rise instead of falling. The bank goes bankrupt after losing $50 billion. Jim leaves the country. He meets Michelle for the last time and tells her that the money has partly been lost forever and partly has been "redistributed". Then ask to her to come after him before departure, which she refuses. The Davises discover at an ATM that their bank balance is $727,000 - an amount referenced in the opening credits. They want to clarify the matter at the neighboring bank branch, but it is one of the many branches that have been closed by O'Reily. They decide to keep the money.

Brantley Foster is a recent graduate of college who has moved to New York City, where he has accepted an entry-level job as a financier. Upon arriving, he discovers that the company for which he is supposed to work has been taken over by a rival corporation. As a result, Brantley is laid off before even starting work. After several interviews for other jobs, he is unsuccessful due to over- or underqualification, or having no experience. Brantley ends up working in the mailroom of the Pemrose Corporation, directed by his "uncle" Howard Prescott, a distant relative he has never met. Pemrose was founded by Howard's father-in-law. Howard achieved the presidency by marrying his boss's daughter, Vera Pemrose. Brantley meets Vera by driving her home in a company limo at his employer's request. She persuades him to stay for a swim and seduces him. Seeing Howard arrive, Brantley and Vera realize that she is his aunt by marriage. She had seduced him out of revenge against her husband for having an affair with a woman at the office. Brantley changes as fast as he can and narrowly escapes the mansion without being spotted by Howard. After inspecting company reports, Brantley realizes that Howard and most of his fellow "suits" (executives) are making pointless or damaging decisions. He notices an empty office in the building due to one of Howard's frequent firings. Using his access to the mailroom and his understanding of the company, he creates and assumes the identity of Carlton Whitfield, a new executive. While handling two jobs (switching between casual apparel and business suits in the elevator), Brantley sparks romantic interest from Christy Wills, a fellow financial wizard who recently graduated from Harvard. Howard, unbeknownst to Brantley, is having an affair with Christy. When Howard asks her to spy on Carlton Whitfield, whom he suspects is a corporate spy for Donald Davenport, she falls in love with "Whitfield", not knowing he is actually Brantley. The Pemrose Corporation is preparing for its impending hostile takeover. If Davenport Corporation absorbs Pemrose in this merger, all workers will get fired, but Howard and his aide Art Thomas will retain their jobs as a favor for cutting money from areas to ease the takeover. Howard believes the company should cut every area, but that would ruin the company and make Davenport begin his hostile takeover. Brantley pitches the idea with Christy to expand the business to prevent the takeover. Later, at a corporate party at Howard and Vera's home, Vera introduces Brantley to three of New York's top financiers to whom he discusses his ideas about the company. Brantley's double identity is discovered when he, Christy, Vera and Howard end up in the same bedroom after the party. Brantley and Christy end their blossoming relationship. He gets fired from his job as Whitfield, as does Christy for refusing to continue her affair with Howard. Vera is divorcing Howard, since she found out about his affair with Christy and his plan to propose to her. While both Christy and Brantley are moving out of their offices, they end up in the same elevator and reconcile, conceiving a revenge plan together with Vera. They raise enough cash, bonds, and stocks to take control of the Pemrose Corporation and, with the help of the financiers from the party, proceed with a hostile takeover bid of Davenport's corporation. Vera, already hating Howard for his inept business practices which were driving her father's empire into the ground, tells the board that she now controls the majority of the voting stock. She promptly replaces him with Brantley, with Jean (Carlton's secretary), Christy and Melrose (Brantley's mailroom colleague) at his side to prevent the takeover and keep everyone's jobs safe. While security guards escort Howard and Art from the Pemrose Building, Brantley and Christy start planning their future together, personal as well as professional.

In March 1943, when the Second World War was at its height, cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, have a problem: the Nazi U-boats have changed one of their code reference books used for Enigma machine ciphers, leading to a blackout in the flow of vital naval signals intelligence. The British cryptanalysts have cracked the "Shark" cipher once before, and they need to do it again to keep track of U-boat locations. The book begins with Tom Jericho returning to Bletchley after a month of recovering from a nervous breakdown brought on by his failed love affair with a coworker named Claire Romilly. Jericho immediately seeks to see her again and finds that she mysteriously disappeared a few days earlier. He enlists the help of Claire's housemate, Hester Wallace, to follow the trail of clues and learn what has happened to Claire. Mr Jericho and Miss Wallace, as they formally address each other, work to decipher intercepts stolen by Claire and determine why she took them. Jericho is closely watched by an MI5 agent, Wigram, who plays cat and mouse with him throughout the film. Meanwhile, U-boats are closing in on a convoy of thirty-seven ships from America, giving the code-breakers less than four days to find a solution to reading the changed Shark cipher. But someone else at Bletchley has a personal interest in the stolen intercepts and may be responsible for Claire's disappearance.

In Paris, Eddie Vuibert (Richard Anconina) is an unemployed man in financial difficulty. A rich Jewish cloth manufacturer takes Eddie into his corporation out of pity because he mistakenly believes him to be Jewish as well. Eddie rapidly integrates in the Parisian Jewish textile community and rises as a sales manager. He continues his masquerade of pretending to be Ashkenazi Jew in order to woo his boss's daughter (played by Amira Casar).

After the death of her husband and a failed love affair with married Royal Air Force Group Captain Richard Paterson, Judith Farrow, a British Home Office assistant, meets Soviet attaché Colonel Feodor Sverdlov while on vacation in Barbados, but their budding personal relationship does not go unnoticed by British intelligence. Judith is enchanted by a story that the seeds of a tamarind tree on a certain plantation take the form of the head of a slave hanged from a tamarind. Sverdlov, on the other hand, dismisses the story as a mere fairy tale. Returning to London, Judith finds a surprise gift from Sverdlov: an envelope containing a tamarind seed. Convinced that Sverdlov is recruiting Judith to be a spy, British intelligence officer Jack Loder has his hands full with a clandestine Russian spy, code-named "Blue", when he learns that his assistant, George MacLeod, is having an affair with Margaret, the wife of a British diplomat Fergus Stephenson, who is a conduit of state secrets. Loder cautions Judith, who is to contact him if she hears from Sverdlov. Meanwhile Sverdlov, assigned to the Soviet Embassy in Paris, suspects that his boss, General Golitysn, distrusts him, and insists that Judith can be recruited as a spy. Sverdlov steals the "Blue" file, his bargaining chip with London to get asylum in Canada, and finagles a romantic stop in Barbados, where he is to meet Judith. Sverdlov eludes an assassination attempt by Golitsyn's agents at London Airport and meets Judith in Barbados, where they consummate their relationship. But the General jets in a group of Soviet agents disguised as businessmen to attack the bungalow with napalm, an explosive bullet-riddled event that kills most of the agents when British agents intercede. The event reportedly kills Sverdlov, destroys the "Blue" file, and traumatizes Judith. Loder later meets Judith in Barbados, where he divulges that newspaper accounts of Sverdlov's death were a false cover; seconds before the explosion, Sverdlov was whisked away to Canada by Loder's assistant, MacLeod. Her doubts dissolve when Loder gives her an envelope that contains a tamarind seed. Loder now knows that "Blue" is Fergus Stephenson, a double agent he can manipulate with low-grade information for Moscow, until the Soviets believe that Stephenson is a double agent against themselves and kill him, Loder postulates. Later on, in a Canadian mountain valley, Judith and Sverdlov meet again and share a lovers' embrace.

In August 1904, Sabina Spielrein arrives at the Burghölzli, the pre-eminent psychiatric hospital in Zürich, suffering from hysteria and begins a new course of treatment with the young Swiss doctor Carl Jung. He uses word association and dream interpretation as part of his approach to psychoanalysis and finds that Spielrein's condition was triggered by the humiliation and sexual arousal she felt as a child when her father spanked her naked. Jung and chief of medicine Eugen Bleuler recognize Spielrein's intelligence and energy and allow her to assist them in their experiments. She measures the physical reactions of subjects during word association, to provide empirical data as a scientific basis for psychoanalysis. She soon learns that much of this new science is founded on the doctors' observations of themselves, each other, and their families, not just their patients. The doctors, Jung and Freud, correspond at length before they meet, and begin sharing their dreams and analysing each other, and Freud himself soon adopts Jung as his heir and agent. Jung finds in Spielrein a kindred spirit, and their attraction deepens due to transference. Jung resists the idea of cheating on his wife, Emma, and breaking the taboo of sex with a patient, but his resolve is weakened by the wild and unrepentant confidences of his new patient Otto Gross, a brilliant, philandering, unstable psychoanalyst. Gross decries monogamy in general and suggests that resistance to transference is symptomatic of the repression of normal, healthy sexual impulses, exhorting Jung to indulge himself with abandon. Jung finally begins an affair with Spielrein, including rudimentary bondage and spanking. Things become even more tangled as he becomes her advisor to her dissertation; he publishes not only his studies of her as a patient but eventually her treatise as well. Spielrein wants to conceive a child with Jung, but he refuses. After he attempts to confine their relationship again to doctor and patient, she appeals to Freud for his professional help, and forces Jung to tell Freud the truth about their relationship, reminding him that she could have publicly damaged him but did not want to. Jung and Freud travel to America. However, cracks appear in their friendship as they begin to disagree more frequently on matters of psychoanalysis. Jung and Spielrein meet to work on her dissertation in Switzerland and begin their sexual relationship once more. However, after Jung refuses to leave his wife for her, Spielrein decides to go to Vienna. She meets Freud and says that although she sides with him, she believes he and Jung need to reconcile for psychoanalysis to continue to develop. Following Freud's collapse at an academic conference, he and Jung continue correspondence via letters. They decide to end their relationship after increasing hostilities and accusations regarding the differences in their conceptualisation of psychoanalysis. Spielrein marries a Russian doctor and, while pregnant, visits Jung and his wife. They discuss psychoanalysis and Jung's new mistress. Jung confides that his love for Spielrein made him a better person. The film's footnote reveals the eventual fates of the four analysts. Gross starved to death in Berlin in 1920. Freud died of cancer in London in 1939 after being driven out of Vienna by the Nazis. Spielrein trained several analysts in the Soviet Union before she and her two daughters were shot by the Nazis in 1942. Jung emerged from a nervous breakdown to become the world's leading psychologist before dying in 1961.

Mathias/'Jim', a down-and-out New Yorker, travels to Paris planning to sell the large, valuable apartment in a coveted area he has inherited from his estranged father. Once there, he discovers an old woman, Mathilde, living in the apartment with her daughter Chloé. Jim quickly learns that the apartment is a " viager " – an ancient French system for buying and selling property – meaning he will not actually be in possession of it until Mathilde dies. Until then he owes her a life annuity of €2,400 a month. All this is a surprise to him, as his father never told him and Jim had communication problems with the French lawyer, who does not speak English. Jim has no money and no place to live, but Mathilde will allow him to stay in the apartment with her if he pays rent. However, to pay for the next life annuity payment, he takes and sells furniture from the apartment and also asks a prospective buyer of his contract for advance payments. Inquiring after Mathilde's health her doctor, one of her English students, tells Jim she is in excellent health. Chatting over dinner, he learns she also trades English lessons with the fishmonger. Mathilde asks him if he had visited France over the years, but he had not as his mother considered it to be enemy territory. The next day, Jim invites Chloé and developer François Roy to a café as he wants to discuss possibly selling part of the house by dividing it into two apartments. Neither likes the idea, so Jim asks for a modest deposit while he considers Roy's offer (his way of getting some cash). Discovering Chloé is going to dinner with her male companion, Jim follows her after class. She goes to a café, waving towards the man with whom Jim has seen her entering a hotel some days before. He waves her off, as he is going to dine with his wife and daughters. Observing this, Jim calls her out on it, trying to blackmail her to avoid paying the 2,400 euros. Mathias/Jim discovers that Mathilde and his father had a very long-lasting affair which had started seven years before he was born, while both were married (they could not afford to marry each other). Jim tries to make Mathilde see how her affair with his father affected him and his mother. He felt unloved and ignored, so he turned to drink and had a string of failed marriages. She had a string of failed suicides, finally succeeding when he was 19, which he saw upon his return from college. After meeting with Roy to accept the sale, Jim returns to the apartment. Finding a photo of himself and Chloé together at ten, Mathilde mentions it was the only time he has been there, and that his father stopped coming by after his mother died. Then Jim himself confesses to having slit his own wrists at 40, but although his father lived a few blocks away he did not visit. Upon reflection of how the adultery of their parents affected them emotionally, Chloé breaks off her affair. Both she and Jim recall and bond over their childhoods. At 10 she realised about her mother's affair, at the same time he was trying to prevent the first of many suicide attempts by his. The next day, Jim accepts the papers from Roy's lawyer, and Mathilde comes in, postulating that his mother must have known and approved of her affair with his father. When he divulges that she had 10 to 15 suicide attempts, the last being successful, she collapses from shock. Jim and Chloé have a moment and kiss, but then when she asks Mathilde if she shares a father with Jim, she says she is unsure. He overhears, so goes to run blood tests at the doctor's. Once Mathias/Jim gets the confirmation that he and Chloé are not related, as she wants to stay in the apartment, he decides at the last minute to decline Roy's multi-million Euro offer for the apartment/contract. Mathilde points out that they do not have to worry about money if they sell en viager, albeit they would receive a modest income due to their relatively young ages.

After Sal loses Zoe, the love of his life, in a car crash, he falls into deep depression. His sister Ebe, who watches her brother with growing concern, wants to help him. She works at Aeternum, a company that offers the new technology "Another End" to give the bereaved the opportunity to say goodbye to deceased loved ones in a special way. The memories and consciousness of the deceased, which are stored in the company's database, are fed into a suitable host. The grieving relatives can then interact with the loved one (in someone else's body) in one or more sessions. According to the company's motto, this is intended to enable "another end" for them. The brain of the host absorbs the memories of the deceased every time they fall asleep. They forget everything, but this process cannot be repeated indefinitely. At first, neither Sal nor Zoe's parents want to try this method of coping with their pain. Sal blames himself for Zoe's death, as he was at the wheel in the car accident that claimed her life, and tries to kill himself with pills and alcohol. Ebe finds him in time and is able to prevent the attempt. She also manages to convince Zoe's mother to agree to Zoe's "resuscitation". Sal also finally agrees after a therapist and colleague of Ebe's tells him more about the process. However, he remains skeptical as to whether he will be able to feel a connection to "his Zoe" when she doesn't look like herself. He recognizes Zoe in Ava's body when he follows the therapist's advice and starts an argument with her. He falls in love with her again, is happy and doesn't want to say goodbye to her. He manages to persuade Ebe to give him more time together with Zoe-Ava, even though this jeopardizes her job. However, when the program comes to an end, he doesn't want to stand idly by and watch his newfound love disappear again. He follows the host Ava to her workplace in a strip club and meets up with her several times without revealing that he knows her through the host program. In the process, he learns that Ava has lost her child and is offering herself as a host to escape the daily grind. Since they exceeded the recommended amount of sessions, Ava seems to remember little things from Zoe's past. She finally finds out who Sal is and withdraws. Sal becomes depressed again, but then learns from Ebe that Ava has contacted her and wants to meet up with him again. Ebe is fired from the company because she was resuscitating her brother Sal the whole time, who had already died, as Ebe couldn't handle Sal's death. The Sal/Rental Body and Zoe/Ava wake up together after spending the night together and smile.

Advocate Steve Myers (Billy Connolly) is a disillusioned lawyer who becomes fed-up with the corruption within the judicial system. He quits law, buys a small fishing boat and takes up fishing for a living. Steve's fishing boat is struck by lightning and explodes into pieces, burns and sinks. He informs his insurance company, which reviews and then subsequently declines his claim on the grounds that it is not liable as his fishing boat was destroyed due to an " act of God ". Frustrated that his claim is repeatedly declined, Steve files a claim against God, naming religious officials (Christian, Jewish, Muslim, etc) as representatives of God and thereby the respondents. The religious leaders, their respective lawyers and their insurance companies get together to find a way to settle this dilemma, which catches the fancy of the media. It is in court that God's representatives will have to admit that the destruction of Steve's fishing boat was actually God's act, accept and compensate him, or deny it altogether thereby denying God's existence, leaving the onus on Steve to prove his claim. Steve's battle brings media attention leading to a meeting with journalist Anna Redmond (Judy Davis) who helps to raise his public profile, enlisting the support of others who had fallen victim to insurance companies' "acts of God" clause. He also faces heavy criticism and protests from religious groups as his profile grows, and he backs the church into a disadvantageous position. However, the attention takes its toll on Steve's family, who are exploited by the media, his ex-wife already crippled by debt as the guarantor of the boat. Steve faces a reality check as his family considers moving to Perth, on the other side of the country. Meanwhile, Anna Redmond comes under fire for a history of disputes and attacks on insurance companies, drawing criticism that the case is little more than a publicity stunt. Facing a drawn out legal battle and the impact it would have on those around him, Steve decides he has won a moral victory, and withdraws from the case but not before convincing the judge that insurance companies' use of the term "acts of God" is a misleading term.

Recent Georgetown University graduates Alec Newberry, Leslie Hunter, Kevin Dolenz, Jules Van Patten, and Kirby Keager wait to hear about the conditions of their friends: Wendy Beamish, a sweet-natured young woman devoted to helping others, and Billy Hicks, a former fraternity boy and now reluctant husband and father, after a minor car accident caused by Billy's drinking. At the hospital, Kirby spots an intern named Dale Biberman, with whom he has been infatuated since college. The group gathers at their favorite college hangout, St. Elmo's Bar. Billy has been fired from the job that Alec helped him secure. At their apartment, Alec pressures Leslie to marry him, but she thinks they are unprepared. Kirby is telling Kevin of his love for Dale when Billy shows up, asking to spend the night as he cannot cope with his wife Felicia. Jules accuses Kevin of being gay and loving Alec. When Kevin visits Alec and Leslie for dinner, Alec confesses to Kevin that he recently had sex with a lingerie saleswoman. Billy and Wendy get drunk together, and Wendy reveals that she is a virgin. They kiss, and Billy, tugging at her clothing, makes fun of her girdle. Wendy insists they remain platonic friends. At St. Elmo's during a Halloween party, Jules reveals to Leslie that she is having an affair with her married boss Forrester Davidson. Billy sees Felicia with another man in the crowd and attacks him. Billy is thrown out of the bar but reconciles with Felicia. The women confront Jules about her affair and reckless spending, but she insists that everything is under control. Kirby takes a job working for Kim Sung Ho, a wealthy Korean businessman, and invites Dale to a party at Mr. Kim's house, which he is using without Mr. Kim's permission. Wendy arrives with Howie Krantz, an ungainly Jewish boy whom her parents want her to marry. Alec announces that he and Leslie are engaged, upsetting her. She confronts him about her suspicions of his infidelity, and the two break up. Alec accuses Kevin of telling Leslie about the tryst with the lingerie woman. Jules gives Billy a ride home, and Billy makes a pass at her. Furious, Jules orders him out of her car; Felicia witnesses the confrontation. When Dale skips the party, Kirby drives to the ski lodge where she is staying and meets her boyfriend Guy. Kirby's borrowed car gets stuck, and Dale and Guy invite him in. The next morning, as Kirby prepares to leave the lodge, Dale tells him that she is flattered by his interest in her. He kisses her, and then Guy takes a photo of them before he leaves. Leslie goes to Kevin's apartment to spend the night after the breakup and discovers photographs of her. Kevin confesses his love for her, and the two have sex. Alec goes to the apartment to apologize to Kevin and finds Leslie there. Wendy tells her father that she wants to be independent and move into her own place. Jules has been fired from her job, fallen behind on her credit card payments, and her possessions have been seized. She locks herself in her apartment and opens the windows, intending to freeze to death. Her friends attempt to coax her out, but she is unresponsive. Kirby fetches Billy, who landed a job at a gas station courtesy of Kevin, to calm Jules down. Billy convinces Jules to let him in, and they talk about the challenges of life, overheard by the rest of the gang. Wendy moves into her own place; Billy visits and informs her that he is getting a divorce and moving to New York City to try making it as a musician, and the two have sex. At the bus station, the group gathers once more to say goodbye to Billy. Billy urges Alec to make up with Leslie, but she declares that she does not want to date anyone for a while. Alec and Kevin make up, and the group makes plans to meet for brunch. However, they decide not to go to St. Elmo's and instead choose Houlihan's because there are "not so many kids" there.

The film is set in an alternative reality in which lying does not exist and people are straightforward about what they think and feel. Mark Bellison is a screenwriter in a film industry limited to historical readings because there is no fiction. One night he has a date with the beautiful and wealthy Anna McDoogles. She tells Mark she is not attracted to him, because of his looks and failing financial situation, but is going out with him as a favor to his best friend, Greg Kleinschmidt. The next day, Mark is fired from his job because of the lack of interest in his films (which are set in the lackluster 1300s), and his landlord threatens to evict him for not paying his rent. Crestfallen, he goes to the bank to close his account. The teller informs him that the computers are down and asks him how much money he has in his account. Mark then has an epiphany that enables him to tell the world's first lie, which is that he has $800—the amount he owed his landlord—in his account. He then lies in a variety of other circumstances, initially for personal gain; he prevents a police officer from arresting Greg for drunk driving, convinces a strange woman to have casual sex with him to prevent the end of the world (but fakes a call from NASA confirming the world has been saved after deciding that this was exploitative), breaks the bank at a casino, and writes a screenplay about the world being invaded by aliens in the 14th century that ends with the claim that everyone's memories were erased. He becomes wealthy from the film's success. Mark soon realises that lying can also be used to help others, such as stopping his depressive neighbour Frank Fawcett from committing suicide. Soon after, Mark convinces Anna to go out with him again. She congratulates Mark for his financial success and admits that he would be a good husband and father, but she is still not attracted to him because his genetics and appearance are not likely to produce the kind of child she wants. Mark then gets a call that his mother, Martha, has had a heart attack and rushes to the hospital. There, the doctor tells him that Martha is going to die. She is scared of death, believing that it will bring an eternity of nothingness. Mark, through tears, tells her that death instead brings a joyful afterlife and she dies happy. Mark soon receives worldwide attention as the news of his supposed information about death spreads. After encouragement from Anna, he tells the world, through ten main points, that he talks to a "Man In The Sky" who controls everything and promises great rewards in the good place after death, as long as you do no more than three "bad things". Some time later, Anna and Mark are together in a park and Anna asks him, if they marry, if his now being rich and famous would make their children more physically attractive. Mark wants to lie, but does not because of his love for Anna, and says "No". Meanwhile, Mark's rival, Brad Kessler, pursues Anna romantically, motivated by his jealousy at Mark's success. Though Brad's selfish and cruel manner makes Anna uncomfortable, she continues dating him and they become engaged. Before the wedding, Greg appears and convinces Mark that he has not missed his chance with Anna. Mark reluctantly attends Anna and Brad's wedding, where he objects to the marriage. The officiant, however, informs him that only the Man in the Sky can stop the wedding. Brad and Anna both ask Mark to ask the Man in the Sky what Anna should do, but Mark refuses to say anything and leaves, wanting Anna to choose for herself. Anna walks out and Mark confesses his ability to lie. Anna asks why he did not lie to convince her to marry him; Mark states that it "wouldn't count". Anna confesses that she loves him. Some time later, Anna and Mark are shown happily married with a son (and another child on the way), who appears by his actions to have inherited his father's ability to lie.

Bradley Morahan (played by Mason) is an Australian artist who feels he has become jaded by success and life in New York City. He decides that he needs to regain the edge he had as a young artist and returns to Australia. He sets up in a shack on the shore of a small, sparsely inhabited island on the Great Barrier Reef. There he meets young Cora Ryan (Mirren), who has grown up wild, with her only relative, her difficult, gin -guzzling grandmother 'Ma' (Carr Glyn). To earn money, Cora sells Bradley fish that she has caught in the sea. She later sells him a chicken which she has stolen from his spinster neighbour Isabel Marley (Katsos). When Bradley is suspected of being the thief, he pays Isabel and gets Cora to promise not to steal any more. To help her save enough money to fulfil her dream of becoming a hairdresser in Brisbane, he pays her to be his model. She reinvigorates him, becoming his artistic muse. Bradley's work is disrupted when his sponging longtime "friend" Nat Kelly (MacGowran) shows up. Nat is hiding from the police over alimony he owes. When Bradley refuses to give him a loan, Nat invites himself to stay with Bradley. After several days Bradley's patience becomes exhausted, but Nat then focuses his attention on romancing Isabel, hoping to get some money from her. Instead, she unexpectedly ravishes him. The next day, he hastily departs the island, but not before stealing Bradley's money and some of his drawings. Ma subsequently catches Cora posing nude for Bradley and accuses him of carrying on with her underage granddaughter. Bradley protests that he has done nothing improper. Finally, he gives her the little money he has left to get her to go away. When Cora discovers that Ma has found her hidden cache of money, she chases after her. In the ensuing struggle, Ma falls down a hill, breaks her neck, and dies. The local policeman sees no reason to investigate further, since the old woman was known to be frequently drunk. Later that night Cora goes to Bradley's shack, but is disappointed when he seems to view her only as his model. When she runs out, Bradley follows her into the water, and he finally comes to view her as a desirable young woman.