Gabby, the waitress in an isolated Arizona diner, dreams of a bigger and better life. One day penniless intellectual Alan drifts into the joint and the two strike up a rapport. Soon enough, notorious killer Duke Mantee takes the diner's inhabitants hostage. Surrounded by miles of desert, the patrons and staff are forced to sit tight with Mantee and his gang overnight.
Nineteen year old pioneer woman Marty has recently married. She goes west with her husband Clem, hoping to start a new life. But Clem unexpectedly dies, and Marty finds herself alone, two months pregnant. Widower Clark offers her a marriage of convenience: she needs food and money, and he needs someone to take care of his daughter Missie. She accepts his proposal as a temporary solution.
After her husband dies, Alice and her son, Tommy, leave their small New Mexico town for California, where Alice hopes to make a new life for herself as a singer. Money problems force them to settle in Arizona instead, where Alice takes a job as waitress in a small diner.
Widowed Welsh mother Anna Loenowens becomes a governess and English tutor to the wives and many children of the stubborn King Mongkut of Siam. Anna and the King have a clash of personalities as she works to teach the royal family about the English language, customs and etiquette, and rushes to prepare a party for a group of European diplomats who must change their opinions about the King.
Society matron Mrs. Livingston Baldwin Crane is selected as a juror in the trial of former chorus girl Yvette Gordon, who's accused of murdering her rich older husband. In court and during deliberations, Mrs. Crane proves to be a disruptive and unorthodox juror.
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
In 1962 Hong Kong, two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses.
After World War II, Antonia and her daughter, Danielle, go back to their Dutch hometown, where Antonia's late mother has bestowed a small farm upon her. There, Antonia settles down and joins a tightly-knit but unusual community. Those around her include quirky friend Crooked Finger, would-be suitor Bas and, eventually for Antonia, a granddaughter and great-granddaughter who help create a strong family of empowered women.
A journalist suffering from burn-out wants to finally say goodbye to his office – but his boss doesn’t like the idea one bit.
A rule-bound head butler's world of manners and decorum in the household he maintains is tested by the arrival of a housekeeper who falls in love with him in post-WWI Britain. The possibility of romance and his master's cultivation of ties with the Nazi cause challenge his carefully maintained veneer of servitude.
Nature reporter Orville Shanks retreats to the woods for material for his "Our Wild Friends" column and to volunteer for his favorite cause, the Boy Scouts. When Orville's editor, Crane, orders him to spice up his column, Orville's wife Melba writes a gossip column using animals as metaphors for people. Crane loves Melba's article and gives Orville a raise, and the column becomes a hit.
A junior editor gets a nice promotion while working for a famous New York daily. With the function comes a secretary, a veteran lady accustomed in a certain working tradition. But her new boss goes on a different working culture whose motto is "Speed, efficiency and organization".
Dorante, an impoverished young man, is taken on as a secretary by Araminte, a rich widow with whom he is secretly in love. The valet Dubois does all he can to get Araminte to fall in love with Dorante. Following his staging of Marivaux’s comedy at the Odéon theater, Luc Bondy turns the whole theater building into a film studio, placing his actors in the foyer, under the stage, in the kitchens, using the most unusual and unexpected spots to invent a new dynamic between theater and film.
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.
A small-town store owner with a comatose wife shares a long-term relationship with his seamstress.
Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
After Regina Lampert falls for the dashing Peter Joshua on a skiing holiday in the French Alps, she discovers upon her return to Paris that her husband has been murdered. Soon, she and Peter are giving chase to three of her late husband's World War II cronies, Tex, Scobie and Gideon, who are after a quarter of a million dollars the quartet stole while behind enemy lines.
A 1950s London cleaning lady falls in love with an haute couture dress by Christian Dior and decides to gamble everything for the sake of this folly.
The year is 1938, and Mahatma Gandhi's groundbreaking philosophies are sweeping across India, but 8-year-old Chuyia, newly widowed, must go to live with other outcast widows on an ashram. Her presence transforms the ashram as she befriends two of her compatriots.
When a impoverished widow’s family moves to the big city, two of her five sons become romantic rivals with deadly results.