More or less unseen since 1994's Little Women, director Gillian Armstrong returns with another good-looking adaptation of another acclaimed novel, Peter Carey's 1988 Booker Prize-winning Oscar And Lucinda. Ralph Fiennes plays a religious young man who becomes an Anglican priest obsessed with gambling. En route to Australia, he meets an unusual heiress with similar interests (Cate Blanchett). There's a good deal more to Oscar And Lucinda, but the film is that rare thing, an unpredictable arthouse period piece, and difficult to synopsize because of it. Following some childhood scenes, the film awkwardly tries to pass Fiennes as a wide-eyed, country-bred Oxford student. As good an actor as he is, the clearly mature Fiennes isn't up to the task, and the film itself seems as awkward as he looks in a schoolboy's clothes. But then, unexpectedly, he grows into the role of a full-grown, almost perpetual innocent. A shipboard scene of Fiennes enthusiastically and earnestly explaining the divine nature of gambling is absolutely enthralling—is his addiction divinely inspired or is he constructing an order for the universe based on his own fixation?—and so is the film from that point on, as it shifts to Fiennes' and Blanchett's timid love affair and the difficult, frequently destructive process by which nations are formed and countries become "civilized." Geoffrey Rush's present-day narration is often as intrusive as it is enlightening, and the unwieldy opening scenes may turn viewers against the film, but Oscar And Lucinda is worth your patience. It accumulates weight as it goes along, ultimately becoming as thoughtful and emotionally involving as it is beautiful to behold.