The ambivalences of British-Indian relations, both public and private, are dramatized in the experiences of two women whose lives run in parallel lines in Heat and Dust. In her first major role, Greta Scacchi plays a married young Englishwoman in a small Indian town in the 1920s who finds herself fascinated by the charismatic local ruler. Julie Christie plays this woman's modern-day great-niece who returns to contemporary India to research the scandal her great-aunt provoked.