This lighthearted movie, billed as a comedy, examines some serious and neglected issues.  It begins when a bohemian artist Norman Lindsay (Sam Neill) includes his painting, "Venus crucified," as part of an Australian art exhibit.  The church considers the painting to be blasphemous.  The bishop sends a young, Oxford-educated minister Anthony Campion (Hugh Grant) and his wife Estella (Tara Fitzgerald) to Lindsay's remote retreat to convince the artist to withdraw the painting from the show, lest the public be corrupted by it.  At the artist's residence, they find that Lindsay employs three young models, who routinely pose in the nude for the painter.

The movie is a study in temptation.  Unexpectedly, the minister is not the object of the temptation.  Always a charming, straight-laced Englishman, Campion primly averts his eyes from the nude models, and he seems unmoved by the portraits that decorate the house.  He contents himself with theological arguments with Lindsay.  The artist, in addition to being a champion of the working class, turns out to be a reserved married man who dotes on his two young daughters.  He is also a passionate atheist, declaring that the "vile notion that a god should sacrifice himself"  for mankind's sins to be "disgusting" and "revolting."  He considers the controversy over his painting to be nothing compared to the "suffering the church has caused over the centuries."  

Estella, on the other hand, is much more vulnerable to temptation at the artist's residence.  At first, she seems to be the ideal minister's wife, stoically accepting the trials and inconveniences of the journey.  The artist's lifestyle presents challenges to her way of life, though.  The first challenge is Sheela (Elle MacPherson), the leader of the three models.  Sheela is liberated, strong-willed, and intrusive, as if trying to provoke Estella out of her passivity.  Another challenge is Devlin, a former boxer who works and models for Lindsay.  Devlin is mute and nearly blind from boxing injuries, but his physical stature makes him a sex object to the three models.  Even though Campion avoids the female models, Estella can't resist staring at Devlin.

Estella soon begins to feel kinship to the models and attraction to Devlin.  This comes as a rude shock to the minister, who considers his wife to be as different from the "debauched" models "as animal is from vegetable."  How far will Estella go in the face of temptation?  Like Ullysses, will she crash on the rocks of immorality at the song of the sirens?  Can she return to the life of a good Christian wife?  Or, perhaps, can she become liberated enough to find her own alternative?

The movie provides a rare critique of Christianity from a woman's perspective.  It considers the little-examined belief that women are held responsible for all the sins of humankind in general and of men in particular, ever since Eve in the Garden of Eden.  In the words of Lindsay's wife Rose, women are considered by the church to be "too deafened by the din of [their] bodies to hear God's word."  This attitude is directly contrasted to the liberation of the freethinking artists.

The movie sometimes has an excessive amount of symbolism, mostly involving serpents, apples, and bodies of water, which can become irritating.  It is rated R for female and male nudity.  Overall, it is interesting and thought-provoking without being heavy-handed.