Sting plays the would-be surrogate father of Meryl Streep's unborn child. Adapted from the stage play by David Hare, Plenty follows Streep's Susan Traherne, an Englishwoman unable to recapture the passion and vitality that she experienced as a Resistance supporter in WWII France. The film is set in the years that follow the war, as her life becomes increasingly consumed by loveless despair and empty materialism. Streep gives a wistful and nuanced performance as a character whose deterioration in many ways mirrors the postwar decline of the British Empire.

Recruited by Susan to father her children is working-class Mick. Showing a vulnerability rarely seen through his Police frontman's facade, Sting's Mick finds his blossoming love for Susan unrequited following eighteen months of fruitless dalliances. Although Mick is unable to break through the class barrier separating him from Susan, their affair nonetheless gives rise to Sting's first on-screen love scene, which unfolds as the ceremonial blare of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth resounds outside the bedroom window.