The movie Tess follows the adventures of a young girl named Tess Durbeyfield (Nastassja Kinski). The Durbeyfields are a poor farming family in England, but Tess is an extraordinary beauty. Her father John (John Collin) decides to exploit her, and sends Tess to seek employment at the home of a rich family named D’Urberville. He has been told that the rich family is related to him, and he has deluded hopes that the connection through Tess might raise the prospects of her family regaining their nobility. At the home of the D’Urbervilles Tess meets a rich young man named Alec (Leigh Lawson), who romances her. Throughout the movie her fortunes rise and fall and she later finds a different kind of love with an upright clergyman named Angel (Peter Firth).