Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is an unfulfilled suburban housewife living in Fort Lee, New Jersey who is fascinated with a woman she only knows about by reading messages to and from her in the personals section of a New York City tabloid. This fascination reaches a peak when an ad with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan" seeks a rendezvous in Battery Park with the man who regularly seeks her (i.e. Jim). Roberta goes to Battery Park too, sees the woman (Madonna), and in a series of events involving mistaken identity, amnesia, and other farcical elements, Roberta goes from voyeur to participant in an Alice in Wonderland–style plot, ostensibly motivated by the search for a pair of stolen Egyptian earrings. (See also «In Bed With Madonna» and «Strike a Pose»)