Beautiful young housewife Séverine Serizy cannot reconcile her masochistic fantasies with her everyday life alongside dutiful husband Pierre. When her lovestruck friend Henri mentions a secretive high-class brothel run by Madame Anais, Séverine begins to work there during the day under the name Belle de Jour. But when one of her clients grows possessive, she must try to go back to her normal life.
An unprecedented series of violent tornadoes is sweeping across Oklahoma. Tornado chasers, headed by Dr. Jo Harding, attempt to release a groundbreaking device that will allow them to track them and create a more advanced warning system. They are joined by Jo's soon to be ex-husband Bill, a former tornado chaser himself, and his girlfriend Melissa.
Photographer Robert Kincaid wanders into the life of housewife Francesca Johnson for four days in the 1960s.
A family loaded with quirky, colorful characters piles into an old van and road trips to California for little Olive to compete in a beauty pageant.
When Claire Spencer starts hearing ghostly voices and seeing spooky images, she wonders if an otherworldly spirit is trying to contact her. All the while, her husband tries to reassure her by telling her it's all in her head. But as Claire investigates, she discovers that the man she loves might know more than he's letting on.
Working-class British housewife Myra Savage reinvents herself as a medium, holding seances in the sitting room of her home with the hidden assistance of her under-employed, asthmatic husband, Billy. In an attempt to enhance her credibility as a psychic, Myra hatches an elaborate, ill-conceived plot to kidnap a wealthy couple's young daughter so that she can then help the police "find" the missing girl.
A movie star helps a young singer-actress find fame, even as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.
A hard-working mother inches towards disaster as she divorces her husband and starts a successful restaurant business to support her spoiled daughter.
In a future world where the disease has been finally defeated and everything can be sold, even the crude spectacle of death, the rare case of a dying woman becomes the morbid theme of a revolutionary reality show, broadcast through the curious eyes of a peculiar camera.
Emmi Kurowski, a cleaning lady, is lonely in her old age. Her husband died years ago, and her grown children offer little companionship. One night she goes to a bar frequented by Arab immigrants and strikes up a friendship with middle-aged mechanic Ali. Their relationship soon develops into something more, and Emmi's family and neighbors criticize their spontaneous marriage. Soon Emmi and Ali are forced to confront their own insecurities about their future.
Career criminal Johnny Clay recruits a sharpshooter, a crooked police officer, a bartender and a betting teller named George, among others, for one last job before he goes straight and gets married. But when George tells his restless wife about the scheme to steal millions from the racetrack where he works, she hatches a plot of her own.
It’s 1974 and Sam Bicke has lost everything. His wife leaves him with his three kids, his boss fires him, his brother turns away from him, and the bank won’t give him any money to start anew. He tries to find someone to blame for his misfortunes and comes up with the President of the United States who he plans to murder.
In Hong Kong of 1962, Mrs. Chan and Mr. Chow, a journalist, move into neighbouring apartments on the same day. Their encounters are formal and polite—until a discovery about their respective spouses creates an intimate bond between them.
Returning home from a shopping trip to a nearby town, bored suburban housewife Laura Jesson is thrown by happenstance into an acquaintance with virtuous doctor Alec Harvey. Their casual friendship soon develops during their weekly visits into something more emotionally fulfilling than either expected, and they must wrestle with the potential havoc their deepening relationship would have on their lives and the lives of those they love.
Working-class waitress Slim thought she was entering a life of domestic bliss when she married Mitch, the man of her dreams. After the arrival of their first child, her picture perfect life is shattered when she discovers Mitch's hidden possessive dark side, a controlling and abusive alter ego that can turn trust, love and tranquility into terror. Terrified for her child's safety, Slim flees with her daughter. Relentless in his pursuit and enlisting the aid of lethal henchmen, Mitch continually stalks the prey that was once his family.
On a fishing boat at sea, a 60-year old man has been raising a girl since she was a child. It is agreed that they will get married on her 17th birthday. They live a quiet and secluded life, renting the boat to day fishermen and practicing strange divination rites. Their life changes when a teenage student comes aboard.
When a woman's father goes missing, she enlists a local to aid in her search. The pair soon discover that her father has died at the hands of a wealthy sportsman who hunts homeless men as a form of recreation.
37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him. When she meets his estranged younger brother Ronny, an emotional and passionate man, she finds herself drawn to him. She tries to resist, but Ronny, who blames his brother for the loss of his hand, has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls for Ronny, she learns that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.
In 1965, passionate musician Glenn Holland takes a day job as a high school music teacher, convinced it's just a small obstacle on the road to his true calling: writing a historic opus. As the decades roll by with the composition unwritten but generations of students inspired through his teaching, Holland must redefine his life's purpose.
Grace is a religious woman who lives in an old house kept dark because her two children, Anne and Nicholas, have a rare sensitivity to light. When the family begins to suspect the house is haunted, Grace fights to protect her children at any cost in the face of strange events and disturbing visions.