Centring on the activities of a gang of assorted criminals and, in particular, their leader – a vicious young hoodlum known as "Pinkie" – the film's main thematic concern is the criminal underbelly evident in inter-war Brighton.
An international soccer star is on his way to sign a multimillion dollar contract when something happens that brings his career to an abrupt end. A beautiful waitress, struggling to make it in New York City, discovers something about herself that she's unprepared for. In one irreversible moment, their lives are turned upside down.
The fates of an apparently random group of strangers who each come into contact with a mysterious figure who they believe possesses the power to grant any wish, in return for which they must carry out a task he assigns them.
Esther Blodgett is just another starry-eyed farm kid trying to break into the movies. Waitressing at a Hollywood party, she catches the eye of her idol Norman Maine, is sent for a screen test, and before long attains stardom as newly minted Vicki Lester. She and Norman marry, though his career soon dwindles to nothing due to his chronic alcoholism.
Victor is a cook who works in a greasy roadside restaurant owned by his mother, Dolly. It's just the two of them, a waitress named Delores, and a heavy drinking regular, Leo. But things change when Callie, a beautiful college dropout, shows up as a new waitress and steals Victor's heart. But Victor is too shy to do anything about it, and too self-consciously overweight to dream of winning Callie away.
Tired of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local San Juan newspaper run by the downtrodden editor Lotterman. Adopting the rum-soaked lifestyle of the late ‘50s version of Hemingway’s 'The Lost Generation', Paul soon becomes entangled with a very attractive American woman and her fiancée, a businessman involved in shady property development deals. It is within this world that Kemp ultimately discovers his true voice as a writer and integrity as a man.
Time doesn’t wait for us. Daniel works on his book while spending time in the countryside with his mother and sister. His writing, which has his the troubled relationship with his father as main subject, is composed of memories full of pain, longing and conflict.
Tired of being a small-town waitress, Donna departs with the latest carnival show, living with entertainers Frankie and Patch in a tense, emotional triangle.
Legendary singer Daniel Santos lives in Ocala, Florida, and prepares his biography with Secre, a young journalist. The memory of past glories makes him embark on one more adventure: a tour of South American countries where he was known as “El Jefe” (The Chief) and where he expects to be yet again acclaimed and applauded.
Living in working-class London, Bill, Eileen, and their three grown daughters navigate quiet lives of loneliness: cafe waitress Nadia searches for love through personal ads, hairdresser and single mother Debbie balances casual romance with co-parenting alongside her volatile ex, and expectant mother Molly copes with a partner overwhelmed by impending fatherhood.
A couple discusses their first night and relationship.
A young woman with dreams of being a dancer moves to Hollywood with her draft-dodging boyfriend. While the man is forced to take a job as a janitor, his girlfriend enters the glamour of go-go dancing and the criminal world of drug trafficking.
Two sisters raised on a charter resort in Gran Canaria. After 27 years, they reluctantly return to their childhood island to deal with their parents death, and end up with a half-finished esoteric retreat center in the Canary Islands.
Fed up with the sea, Paul, a Swiss mechanic working in the noisy bowels of a merchant ship, lands in Lisbon.
Romain, 31, a fashion photographer with terminal cancer, elects to die alone, preparing others to live past him rather than prolong the inevitable with chemotherapy or be smothered in sympathy by those who know him.
A computer specialist is sued for sexual harassment by a former lover turned boss who initiated the act forcefully, which threatens both his career and his personal life.
Trapped in our gig jobs economy, an aspiring masseur learns the sacrifices required from an experienced massage therapist.
Lisa Conroy is general manager at a highway-side 'sports bar with curves', Double Whammies. She nurtures and protects her employees fiercely - but over the course of one trying day, her optimism is battered from every direction. Double Whammies sells a big, weird American fantasy, but what happens when reality pokes a bunch of holes in it?
Lucía is a young waitress in Madrid who seeks refuge on a quiet, secluded Mediterranean island after the loss of her longtime boyfriend. Amidst the fresh air, dazzling sun, and glistening deep blue water, Lucía begins to piece together the dark corners of her past relationship.
A prison guard begins a tentative romance with the unsuspecting widow of a man whose execution he presided over.