Typhus

the long version

Set in Malaya during the British protectorate, the story centers on the improbable couple formed by Nellie, a down-at-heel nightclub singer, whose partner succumbs at an early stage to the epidemic of typhus sweeping the country, and the disgraced former doctor Georges, who has sunk to the lowest depths of a highly stratified colonial society. Though it does not shy from the political issues of colonialism and race that are implied in its setting, Typhus is both a turbulent love story in the best traditions of Western popular cinema and an existentialist tale of moral redemption. --Publisher's description.