One day, Carmen Müller realizes that her husband Werner has been unemployed for months and has accumulated debts of 80,000 DM in their bank account. She comes up with a plan to rob her bank. When the branch manager and neighbor Lothar Fuchs, whom Carmen has always envied for his beauty and wealth, recognizes her, she takes him hostage. In their hideout in the Allgäu, the banker falls in love with the housewife, just as Werner and Fuchs' mistress Gabriele grow closer. The quartet form an alliance and defraud the bank together. Having come into money so suddenly, the Müllers don't feel comfortable either and secretly distribute their fortune around the neighborhood.
Ambitious Emma Eckhert successfully makes her way into a world previously reserved for men: that of high finance. She quickly becomes popular with small savers, but leads a scandalous life that will cost her.
An intimate study of two women friends who come to each other because of troubles with everyday life and with men and thus try to enjoy a life based on their ideas.
In Cold War-era West Berlin, American Coca-Cola executive C.R. 'Mac' MacNamara is tasked with playing babysitter to his boss' spoiled 17-year-old daughter Scarlett, who proves more difficult than anticipated when she reveals that she is pregnant by a Communist.
In turn of the century London, a magical nanny employs music and adventure to help two neglected children become closer to their father.
Marnie is a beautiful but emotionally withdrawn thief, stealing from employers before disappearing under new identities. When her new boss, Mark Rutland, discovers her secret, his fascination turns to obsession, and he blackmails her into marriage, convinced he can cure her. But as he probes deeper into Marnie’s fractured mind, long-buried fears and compulsions begin to surface.
Eight very different couples deal with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London.
Arrogant Don Emilio is a rich man who have maids, a private nurse Nikki, and later a sexy, personal secretary Susie at his disposal. He has two brothers, Dodong and Egay who have sinister thoughts on him, as they want his riches. After some slapstick mishaps and when the Don seemingly went bankrupt, he left his mansion to live with the two but experiences unfair treatment. He ended up living with his stepbrother Edwin in the slum, but his arrogance and his annoying cohorts resulted to differences with Edwin and his girlfriend Girlie. Unbeknown to them, Don Emilio is actually playing a scheme of his own to determine which brother really cares for him the most.
A boy and his brother run away from home and hitch cross-country, with help from a girl they meet, to compete in the ultimate video-game championship.
Thief Gaston Monescu and pickpocket Lily are partners in crime and love. Working for perfume company executive Mariette Colet, the two crooks decide to combine their criminal talents to rob their employer. Under the alias of Monsieur Laval, Gaston uses his position as Mariette's personal secretary to become closer to her. However, he takes things too far when he actually falls in love with Mariette, and has to choose between her and Lily.
Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.
Low-level bureaucrat Sam Lowry escapes the monotony of his day-to-day life through a recurring daydream of himself as a virtuous hero saving a beautiful damsel. Investigating a case that led to the wrongful arrest and eventual death of an innocent man instead of wanted terrorist Harry Tuttle, he meets the woman from his daydream, and in trying to help her gets caught in a web of mistaken identities, mindless bureaucracy and lies.
Jean-Claude Delsart, a 50 years-old bailiff, with his worn-out smile and heart, abandoned a long time ago the idea that life could give him pleasures. Until the day, he dares to push the doors of a tango lesson...
After a whirlwind romance in Mexico, a beautiful heiress marries a man she barely knows with hardly a second thought. She finds his New York home full of his strange relations, and macabre rooms that are replicas of famous murder sites. One locked room contains the secret to her husband's obsession, and the truth about what happened to his first wife.
Fong (Miriam Yeung) is already at odds with Wu (Edison Chen), one of her bosses at an ad agency, when she makes a major mistake at work that puts her job on the line. To save herself, she feigns pregnancy, which, under Hong Kong law, means she cannot be fired for 10 months. However, while there may be some perks that accompany her "pregnancy," she is eventually forced to concoct increasingly elaborate lies and involve everyone around her in the charade.
A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
With the help of a talking freeway billboard, a "wacky weatherman" tries to win the heart of an English newspaper reporter, who is struggling to make sense of the strange world of early-90s Los Angeles.
A transit worker pulls commuter Peter off railway tracks after he's mugged, but—while he's in a coma—his family mistakenly thinks she's Peter's fiancée, and she doesn't correct them. Things get more complicated when she falls for his brother, who's not quite sure that she's who she claims to be.
Lucas, a wealthy, 43 year-old divorced businessman, is irresistibly attracted to Elsa, a 38 year old renowned sculptor from whom he has commissioned a piece to decorate the reception at his office.
The twelve-year-old Emil and his father are haunted by bad luck. To take a break from a series of family disasters, Emil is allowed to spend a few days with a friend of the family, the female priest Hummel in Berlin. In the train he runs across the slick Max Grundeis who anaesthetizes Emil and steals his savings of 1500 DM. When he finally arrives in Berlin, Emil and a gang of street kids, led by the cheeky girl Pony Hütchen, try to find the gangster, who haunts the posh Hotel Adlon as a hotel thief. Meanwhile, to prevent anyone from finding out about Emil's mishap, Gypsi, a member of the gang of kids, passes himself off as Emil, thus wreaking havoc on the home of the priest.