Destinies of Women

The film consists of a series of tightly interlinked vignettes, the most sustained of which details the story of a man and a woman who are passionately in love. Their attempts to consummate their passion are constantly thwarted, by their families, by the Church and bourgeois society in general.

A young couple facing eviction and debt experiences an unexpected event that changes their lives.

A chance meeting at an auction brings together Sawsan, a working-class girl and Adel, heir to a vast fortune with several estates to his name. This leads to a whirlwind marriage. This development spells trouble for Adel's fair-weather bourgeois clique, who are used to manipulating him with their own financial interests at heart.

Spoiled rich girl Nadia gets jealous after finding out her father's plan to remarry. She tries to break them apart, spreading lies about her new mother-in-law and getting involved with a man twice her age.

After dumping a bucket of water on a beautiful young woman from the window of a train car, wealthy Frenchman Mathieu, regales his fellow passengers with the story of the dysfunctional relationship between himself and the young woman in question, a fiery 19-year-old flamenco dancer named Conchita. What follows is a tale of cruelty, depravity and lies -- the very building blocks of love.

Free after years in prison, Carlito Brigante intends to give up his criminal ways, but it's not long before the ex-con is sucked back into the New York City underworld.

Soviet High School girls are sent to the U.S. where they are taught to become secret agents and use sex to find information.

A young, unnamed woman, while biking home from the bank she works at, happens upon a weakened tree goddess whose native shrine is being demolished for construction work. She rescues her and brings the goddess home with her. The two form a relationship, but what will happen to the goddess as the construction progresses?

Disillusioned with life, love, and the pressures of the modern world, Jay goes on a quest for higher meaning. But when two violinists, one mysterious man and a briefcase seem to conspire against him, he discovers what really pulls the strings of his heart.

When Elisa confronts Sean about finally building towards the life they both dreamed of, it occurs to Sean that there's no time like the present to make a change. The question is, did he wait too long?

A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.

A man receives a mysterious email appearing to be from his wife, who was murdered years earlier. As he frantically tries to find out whether she's alive, he finds himself being implicated in her death.

An enigmatic tale of four people whose lives are intertwined by destiny are subject to the laws of fate. They discover that luck is something they cannot afford to be without as they gamble with the highest stakes possible in a deadly game from which only one of them will emerge intact.

A teenager lives out the hilarious and often tragic consequences of being lethally attractive, until he meets a girl with a congenital defect.

This examination of a famous scandal from the 1970s explores the relationship between Barbara Baekeland and her only son, Antony. Barbara, a lonely social climber unhappily married to the wealthy but remote plastics heir Brooks Baekeland, dotes on Antony, who is homosexual. As Barbara tries to "cure" Antony of his sexuality -- sometimes by seducing him herself -- the groundwork is laid for a murderous tragedy.

Simple Italian postman learns to love poetry while delivering mail to a famous poet; he uses this to woo local beauty Beatrice.

When Lucy Honeychurch and chaperon Charlotte Bartlett find themselves in Florence with rooms without views, fellow guests Mr Emerson and son George step in to remedy the situation. Meeting the Emersons could change Lucy's life forever but, once back in England, how will her experiences in Tuscany affect her marriage plans?

A struggling young writer finds his life and work dominated by his unfaithful wife and his radical feminist mother, whose best-selling manifesto turns her into a cultural icon.

A strong-willed peasant girl is sent by her father to the estate of some local aristocrats to capitalize on a rumour that their families are from the same line. This fateful visit commences an epic narrative of sex, class, betrayal, and revenge.

A former champion rodeo rider is reduced to using his saddle skills to promote a breakfast cereal in a gaudy Las Vegas show. When he's asked to perform with a $12 million horse, he discovers it is being doped to remain docile. He flees into the desert astride the beast in an act of defiance. A story-hungry female reporter gives chase.