Roberta (Rosanna Arquette) is an unfulfilled suburban housewife living in Fort Lee, New Jersey, who is fascinated by a woman she knows about only by reading messages to and from her in the personals section of a New York City tabloid. Her fascination reaches a peak when an ad, with the headline "Desperately Seeking Susan," seeks a rendezvous in The Battery (Manhattan) with the man who regularly seeks her (Jim, played by Robert Joy). Roberta goes to Battery Park, too, sees the woman (Madonna (entertainer)), and in a series of events involving mistaken identity, amnesia, and other farcical elements, goes from voyeur to participant in an ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland''–style plot, ostensibly motivated by the search for a pair of stolen Egyptian earrings. With both of them trying to find Roberta, her husband Gary (Mark Blum) encounters the wild Susan.