At his mother's funeral, banker Henry meets his Aunt Augusta, an eccentric old woman who takes him on a wild adventure to rescue an old lover.
At his mother's funeral, stuffy bank clerk Henry Pulling meets his Aunt Augusta Bertram (Dame Maggie Smith), an elderly eccentric with more-than-shady dealings who pulls him along on a whirlwind adventure as she attempts to rescue an old lover.—Kathy Li
At the funeral of Angelica Pulling in London, her staid, straight-laced, and joyless banker son, Henry Pulling, and her eccentric sister, Augusta Bertram, ostensibly meet for the first time. Henry had heard stories from his mother about his Aunt Augusta, whom he had assumed had long passed. Information from Augusta about his "mother" and an action by Augusta's Sierra Leonean friend Wordsworth convince Henry to agree to Augusta's request to accompany her on an imminent trip to Paris, despite Henry never having done any international travelling. It isn't until they are well on their way that Henry learns that the purpose of Augusta's trip is not to sight-see as he had assumed he would do, but rather to save the only true love that she has ever had in her unusual and unique life, an Italian by the name of Ercole Visconti. As Augusta's task takes her and Henry far beyond just Paris and as they get into one adventure after another in Augusta's often less than above board actions, Augusta and Henry will either be torn apart by their fundamental differences, or brought closer together as they begin to understand the need to be a little more like the other, the only real family they have left in the world. For Henry, what happens is also the result of coming to a realization of what Augusta's information about his mother and father really means.—Huggo
At his mother's funeral, uptight banker Henry Pulling meets an eccentric woman claiming to be his aunt, Augusta Bertram. After the ceremony, the two go to her apartment -- where a gruesome package arrives containing a severed finger and a ransom note for the release of Augusta's former lover, Ercole Visconti. As they travel across Europe to the borders of Turkey and into North Africa, Henry and Augusta tangle with deception, authorities and death.
While attending the cremation of his mother's remains, London bank manager Henry Pulling meets eccentric Augusta Bertram, a woman who claims to be his aunt and announces that the woman who raised him was not his biological mother. She invites him back to her apartment, where her lover, an African fortune teller named Zachary Wordsworth, is waiting for her. Shortly after she receives a package allegedly containing the severed finger of her true love, Ercole Viscont, with a note promising the two will be reunited upon payment of $100,000.
Augusta asks Henry to accompany her to Paris, and he agrees, unaware she actually is smuggling £50,000 out of England and transporting it to Turkey for a gangster named Crowder in exchange for a £10,000 fee she can put toward the ransom. The works of art adorning the station are shown. The two board the Orient Express, where Henry meets Tooley, a young American hippie who takes a liking to him and gets him to smoke marijuana with her in her compartment. When the train reaches Milan, Augusta is greeted at the station by her illegitimate son Mario, who presents her with a bouquet of flowers and an ear that supposedly belongs to Ercole.
When they arrive at the Turkish border, Augusta's plot is uncovered by officials who send her and Henry back to Paris. Augusta attempts to secure the money she needs from her former lover Achille Dambreuse, but the wealthy Frenchman dies of a heart attack in her hotel suite before she achieves her goal. Efforts to extort $100,000 from Achille's widow in return for their silence about the adulterous circumstances of his death fail, and Augusta decides to sell a valuable portrait of herself she claims was painted by Amedeo Modigliani to raise the money.
After an argument with Henry, Augusta lets it slip that he is Ercole's "other son". Once the painting is sold, they join Zachary on a fishing boat to North Africa, where they pay the ransom and are reunited with Ercole. He removes his bandages, revealing ear and finger intact, indicating he has been the mastermind of a plot to separate Augusta from her money. Henry, who was suspicious from the start, reveals not only that he has deduced Augusta is his biological mother, but that he exchanged "neatly cut pages of the Barcelona telephone directory" for the money in the package they delivered. He wants to use the cash he kept to purchase the portrait Augusta sold, but she tells him she would prefer to use it to finance more travels. Henry decides the matter should be decided with the toss of a coin and chooses 'heads'. Wordsworth tosses the coin, and the film ends on a freeze frame shot of Augusta, Henry and Wordsworth as they await the fall of the coin.
