Desperate Remedies

Film (Trailer and Excerpts) – 1993

Mature

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This stylishly high camp melodrama from directors Stewart Main and Peter Wells won acclaim, after debuting at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival. In the imaginary 19th-century town of Hope, draper Dorothea Brooks (Jennifer Ward-Lealand) is desperate to save her sister from the clutches of opium, sex and the dastardly Fraser. She begs hunky migrant Lawrence Hayes to help; but complications ensue. Inspired partly by 1930s and 40s Hollywood melodramas, Desperate Remedies was sumptously shot by Leon Narbey (Whale Rider). Richard King writes about the film here.

Desperate Remedies often feels a little like a soap opera, with its long glances, pregnant pauses and romantic morality. But this is Dynasty shot on the set of Coppola’s Dracula, or an episode of Poldark re-imagined by Peter Greenaway ...
– Mark Tierney, Listener review, 11 September 1993