When a film star, Eliot Henessey, arrives in Indonesia to adopt a baby, she attracts the interest of a journalist who questions her motivations, a bureaucrat who hopes to use her to publicize the islands and a foster father who believes that Eliot’s personal life leaves her little room for a child. Meanwhile, Ted and Carol, an infertile couple in the American suburbs, initiate a more normal adoption process, but find that the expense, uncertainty and invasive examinations reveal rifts in their desires to have a family.