Pleasantly plump teenager Tracy Turnblad auditions to be on Baltimore's most popular dance show - The Corny Collins Show - and lands a prime spot. Through her newfound fame, she becomes determined to help her friends and end the racial segregation that has been a staple of the show.
While conducting a research experiment intended to bring about an alternative to modern surgery, exhausted Los Angeles surgeon Dr. Daniel Jekyll falls asleep and accidentally inhales the white powders, transforming him into a wildly uninhibited nymphomaniac.
Broadway director Julian Marsh needs just one more hit show so he can retire and recover his health. It looks like he just may pull it off until temperamental star Dorthy Brock breaks her ankle on the eve of the show's premiere and has to be replaced by her understudy Peggy.
Rufus T. Firefly is named president/dictator of bankrupt Freedonia and declares war on neighboring Sylvania over the love of wealthy Mrs. Teasdale.
Danny Muldoon, a Chicago policeman, still lives with his overbearing mother Rose. He meets and falls in love with Theresa Luna, whose father owns the local funeral parlour. Naturally, his mother objects to the relationship, and Danny and Theresa must either overcome her objections or give up the romance.
Juliet, a white girl, falls in love with a dark-skinned romeo, a divine trumpet player from the Roma orchestra. But her father Satchmo doesn't accept Romeo. Romeo needs to fight for Juliet at the legendary Festival of the trumpeters in Gucha.
Manchester, 1976. Tony Wilson is an ambitious but frustrated local TV news reporter looking for a way to make his mark. After witnessing a life-changing concert by a band known as the Sex Pistols, he persuades his station to televise one of their performances, and soon Manchester's punk groups are clamoring for him to manage them. Riding the wave of a musical revolution, Wilson and his friends create the legendary Factory Records label and The Hacienda club.
Two drag performers and a transgender woman travel across the desert to perform their unique style of cabaret.
Jerry Mulligan is an exuberant American expatriate in Paris trying to make a reputation as a painter. His friend Adam is a struggling concert pianist who's a long time associate of a famous French singer, Henri Baurel. A lonely society woman, Milo Roberts, takes Jerry under her wing and supports him, but is interested in more than his art.
Humiliated and down on his luck, a superintendent turns his life around when he decides to write a book.
Cécile teaches English at the Collegium in Bruges. She has a boyfriend, Thomas, a student at the Beaux-Arts. Cécile lives with Mrs. Hanka, who reads horoscopes and surrounds herself with natal charts. She says she's known a lot about people for 30 years.
1911. Lenin organizes the first Bolshevik party school near Paris, in the small town of Longjumeau. Through a chain of historical parallels and associations, this time is intertwined with the events of the Paris Commune, the October Revolution and the political struggles of the post-revolutionary years.
Plagued by a hidden childhood trauma that is destroying his life, an obsessive-compulsive MMA fighter moves to Fire Island and pretends to be gay in order to buy the house of his dreams and exorcise his demons.
Unable to complete the deal by telephone, advertising executive Roberts sends his assistant Ann to Cuba to lure a Cuban band, led by Desi Arnaz, on to an American radio program. Attracted to Ann, Arnaz and his band come to New York but complications arise when the squeaky-voiced, addle-brained sponsor of the program decides she wants to be the vocalist on the program.
Showman Jerry Travers is working for producer Horace Hardwick in London. Jerry demonstrates his new dance steps late one night in Horace's hotel room, much to the annoyance of sleeping Dale Tremont below. She goes upstairs to complain and the two are immediately attracted to each other. Complications arise when Dale mistakes Jerry for Horace.
A career driven professional from Manhattan is wooed by a young painter, who also happens to be the son of her psychoanalyst.
Handsome Jules has problems with school and girls. His domineering dad doesn't make matters easier, although his mom is supportive of her only child. Contemplating an extramarital affair, Claude Jade attempts to discreetly shop for condoms, a cute twist on what is traditionally a teenage boy's awkward ordeal.
At fifty, René Maugras has lost everything. This wealthy press boss fell into a coma and was rushed to hospital. He has since emerged from his worrying state of health but remains unable to move and communicate. He must also begin rehabilitation, which turns out to be particularly humiliating. Fortunately for him there is Blanche, his nurse, who surrounds him with affection. Blanche takes her case to heart.
Philippe, Didier, Georges and Edina were born on the same day. The three boys have always been in love with Edina, but she's always put them off. They set off in search of her and find her posing for a photographer. Seeing them, she flees and dies in the process. By mutual agreement, the three boys commit suicide to join her.
In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.