Penelope Wilhern is a young woman from a wealthy family with all the qualities to make an excellent match for any other well-bred man of her status. However, the one thing that sets her apart is her nose, which resembles that of a pig.
Generations ago, an embittered witch placed a curse on the Wilhern family because their son had impregnated her daughter, one of their serva
nts. The son offered marriage but his family refused and married him off to another. The witch's daughter, overwrought, threw herself off a cliff. The witch cursed the Wilherns so that the next girl born into the
clan would have the nose of a pig. For five generations, only sons were born into the family, until Penelope (Christina Ricci) was born, stricken with the curse. It is said that the curse can only be lifted if one of her own learns to love her, which is interpreted by her parents to mean a man of noble birth.
When a tabloid reporter named Lemon (Peter Dinklage) begins stalking the family to get a photograph of the infant Penelope, her parents, Jessica (Catherine O'Hara) and Franklin (Richard E.
Grant), fake their daughter's death and cloister her away in their mansion, where Penelope spends her life immersing herself in intellectual pursuits such as literature,horticulture and music. When Penelope becomes an adult, her parents attempt to introduce her to possible suitors, hoping that one of them will fall in love with her and break the curse. Unfortunately, every man who lays eyes on the girl takes flight at first sight, never to return, including Edward Humphrey Vanderman III (Simon Woods), a spoiled, cruel-hearted snob who finds her repulsive. Vanderman's panicked flight from the Wilhern house results in a newspaper article dubbing him unstable. To redeem his name, he teams up with Lemon and the team goes out to find someone who can get into the house for a picture. They mistakenly take Johnny Martin (James McAvoy), an unrepentant gambler with a heavy heart, for a distantly blue-blooded Max Campion (Nick Frost). Martin agrees to help Lemon and Vanderman snatch a photograph of Penelope for money. When "Max" meets Penelope, however, he is unexpectedly
caught off guard by her disarming charm,
and decides to renege on his agreement with Lemon and Vanderman, realizing that their attempt to exploit Penelope is repugnant. Penelope interprets Max's ambivalence to mean that he too finds her monstrous. She decides to flee the protection of her parents' home and journeys out into the city, naive and ignorant about the world. Having no money and seeing that Lemon and Vanderman are offering a reward for a photograph of her, she decides to collect on the reward by producing a photo of herself, essentially coming out of hiding to the public.
Penelope's courage in going out to the world then acts as an inspiration for Johnny who quits gambling and starts work in an old theatre.
Vanderman's father, seeing the public's fondness for Penelope and embarrassed by his son's vocal cruelty toward her, coerces Edward into proposing to her. Penelope nearly marries him, but backs out of the wedding at the last minute. When her mother urges her to marry him, lest she be forced to spend the rest of her life with her current appearance, Penelope becomes exasperated and says that she likes herself the way she is. As a result, Penelope breaks the curse, and her pig snout and ears disappear at last.
Penelope moves on with her life, becoming a horticulturist and teacher, the spectacle of her former appearance forgotten by the public. On the next Halloween, however, she often runs into people wearing masks of herself with a pig nose. At a Halloween costume party at which she wears a mask of her former face, she goes to find Johnny (who lives nearby), who, una
ware of her transformation, apologizes for not being able to break her curse, although it is obvious he is still in love with her. After Penelope removes her mask
and reveals that she had the power to break the curse all along, the two begin a romance.
The film ends with Johnny pushing Penelope on a swing after teaching a horticultural class. Lemon is about to take a picture from a nearbyrowboat, but observes their happiness and decides to let his obsession go.
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