In mid-1800's England, Oscar (Ralph Fiennes) is a young Anglican priest, a misfit and an outcast, but with the soul of an angel. As a boy, even though from a strict Pentecostal family, he felt God told him through a sign to leave his father and his faith and join the Church of England. Lucinda (Cate Blanchett) is a teenaged Australian heiress who has an almost desperate desire to liberate her sex from the confines of the male-dominated culture of the Australia of that time. She buys a glass factory and has a dream of building a church made almost entirely of glass, and then transporting it to the Australian Outback. Oscar and Lucinda meet on a ship going to Australia; once there, they are for different reasons ostracized from society, and as a result "join forces" together. Oscar and Lucinda are both passionate gamblers, and Lucinda bets Oscar her entire inheritance that he cannot transport the glass church to the Outback safely. Oscar accepts her wager, and this leads to the events that will change both their lives forever.

Drame sentimental. Fils de pasteur, Oscar a grandi dans une petite communauté rurale d'Angleterre. Fille d'un manufacturier de verre, Lucinda a grandi pour sa part à Sydney en Australie. Ils partagent tous deux la même passion, celle du jeu. Un jour, Oscar et Lucinda se croisent sur un bateau qui a quitté Londre à destination de Sydney. Leur passion commune pour le jeu les rapproche, puis l'amour s'installe entre eux. Mais ce couple peu conventionnel ne tarde pas à paraître un peu scandaleux dans la société victorienne de Sydney. Craignant de perdre Lucinda, Oscar décide de lui démontrer son amour en relevant un incroyable défi.