Plot

Dr Walter gets married to the beautiful Kitty but soon finds out that she is cheating on him. Battling his way through problems, he heads to China to fight a dreaded disease spread in a small village.

This love story has Kitty (Naomi Watts) meeting young, intelligent, shy and somewhat dull Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton), whose forte is the study of infectious diseases, and the convenient marriage to which she finds herself committed. It is in this web of intrigue that they head for China, only after Walter discovers Kitty's infidelity with the dashing and witty diplomat Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber). So much as to hide her from herself and to help thwart a cholera outbreak, this is a marriage more than on the rocks. This is a cold, indifferent, and loveless partnership in a vast unknown and deadly environment that will test both of these flightless lovebirds and with the hardships and tolerances more than any had ever anticipated. A visual delight amidst the pain and suffering of dying people and failing marriage. Will a cure be found for both, before it's too late?—Cinema_Fan

This is a love story set in the 1920s that tells the story of a young English couple, Walter Fane (Edward Norton), a middle class doctor and Kitty (Naomi Watts), an upper-class woman, who get married for the wrong reasons and relocate to Shanghai, where she falls in love with someone else. When he uncovers her infidelity, in an act of vengeance, he accepts a job in a remote village in China ravaged by a deadly epidemic, and takes her along. Their journey brings meaning to their relationship and gives them purpose in one of the most remote and beautiful places on Earth.—Warner Independent Pictures

Kitty Fane (Naomi Watts) is a frivolous young English woman who longs for romance and excitement, trapped in a loveless marriage to a staid Shanghai researcher. When her husband learns she has had an affair, he volunteers to fight a cholera epidemic in China's war-torn interior. Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton) forces his wife to accompany him on the difficult and hazardous journey, endangering her life in the process.—Joni Holderman

Shortly after meeting earnest, socially awkward bacteriologist Walter Fane at a party, vivacious, vain, and vacuous London socialite Kitty Garstin enters into a loveless marriage with him at the urging of her domineering mother. Following a honeymoon in Venice, the couple go to Shanghai, where the doctor is stationed in a government lab studying infectious diseases.

Kitty meets Charles Townsend, a married British vice consul, and the two engage in a clandestine affair. When Walter discovers his wife's infidelity, he seeks to punish her by threatening to divorce her on the grounds of adultery if she doesn't accompany him to a small village in a remote area of China, where he has volunteered to treat victims of an unchecked cholera epidemic sweeping through the area. Kitty begs to be allowed to divorce him quietly and he agrees, provided Townsend will leave his wife Dorothy and marry her. When she proposes this possibility to her lover, he declines to accept, and she is compelled to travel to the mountainous inland region with her husband.

They embark upon an arduous, two-week-long overland journey that would be considerably faster and much easier if they traveled by river, but Walter is determined to make Kitty as unhappily uncomfortable as possible. Upon their arrival in Mei-tan-fu, she is distressed to discover they will be living in near squalor, far removed from everyone except their cheerful neighbor Waddington, a British deputy commissioner living with a young Chinese woman in relative opulence.

Walter and Kitty barely speak to each other and, except for a cook and a Chinese soldier assigned to guard her, she is alone for long hours. After visiting an orphanage run by a group of French nuns, Kitty volunteers her services, and she is assigned to work in the music room. She is surprised to learn from the Mother Superior that her husband loves children, and in this setting she begins to see him in a new light as she learns what a selfless and caring person he can be. When he sees her with the children, he in turn realizes she is not the shallow, selfish person he thought her to be.

As Walter's anger and Kitty's unhappiness subside, their marriage begins to blossom. She soon learns she is pregnant, but is unsure who the father is. Walter in love with Kitty again assures her it doesn't matter.

Just as the local cholera problem is coming under control, ailing refugees from elsewhere pour into the area, forcing Walter to set up a camp outside town. He contracts the disease and Kitty nurses him, but he dies, devastating her.

Five years later, while shopping with her young son Walter in London, Kitty meets Townsend by chance on the street. He suggests the two get together and asks young Walter his age, realising from the reply that he could be Walter's father. Kitty, however, rejects his overtures and walks away. When her son asks who Townsend is, she replies "No one important".