Based on a semi-autobiographical novel by artist Norman Lindsay, "Age of Consent" features Mason as successful painter Bradley Morahan. Disillusioned with the commercial and dispassionate turn his career has taken in New York, Bradley decides to return to his native Australia to recapture the artistic freedom and inspiration he had as a young man. Retreating to an island on the Great Barrier Reef, he unexpectedly finds his inspiration in Cora (Helen Mirren), a teenage girl on the brink of womanhood whose only guardian is her perpetually drunk and abusive grandmother (Neva Carr-Glyn). Cora is secretly trying to save up enough money to escape from her grandmother and find a job as a hairdresser on the mainland. Bradley pays her to pose nude for him, producing the best work of his life in the process and simultaneously inspiring her to embrace her sexual allure.