Many loosely connected characters cross paths in this film, based on the stories of Raymond Carver. Waitress Doreen Piggot accidentally runs into a boy with her car. Soon after walking away, the child lapses into a coma. While at the hospital, the boy's grandfather tells his son, Howard, about his past affairs. Meanwhile, a baker starts harassing the family when they fail to pick up the boy's birthday cake.
Heinrich wishes to conquer death through love, and when he meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance, she expresses interest in a suicide pact when she learns she has a terminal illness.
A community in Zion Creek, Utah, is turned upside down when a popular high school girl disappears in the midst of her father's political campaign.
After completing jail time for beating up a man who tried to seduce his mentally-handicapped teenage daughter, the Butcher wants to start life anew. He institutionalizes his daughter and moves to the Lille suburbs with his mistress, who promises him a new butcher shop. Learning that she lied, the Butcher returns to Paris to find his daughter.
After the death of his boss's wife, a young engineer faces the sudden psychological metamorphosis of his own wife, seemingly possessed by the soul of the deceased...
As young children, Otto and Ana become best friends, leading to the marriage of Ana's mother to Otto's father. When Otto and Ana become teenagers, they begin a sexual relationship, which they hide from their parents. The two fall deeply in love and seem destined to spend the rest of their lives together. However, their relationship is tested when Otto's mother dies and the two are separated.
A small group of French students are studying Mao, trying to find out their position in the world and how to change the world to a Maoistic community using terrorism.
Two FBI agents investigating the murder of civil rights workers during the 60s seek to breach the conspiracy of silence in a small Southern town where segregation divides black and white. The younger agent trained in FBI school runs up against the small town ways of his partner, a former sheriff.
A group of male friends become obsessed with five mysterious sisters who are sheltered by their strict, religious parents.
The incredibly spoiled and overprivileged students of Camden College are a backdrop for an unusual love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.
In Los Angeles, a colorful assortment of bohemians try to make sense of their intersecting lives. The moody Dark Smith, his bisexual girlfriend, her lesbian lover and their shy gay friend plan on attending the wildest party of the year. But they'll only make it if they can survive the drug trips, suicides, trysts, mutilations and alien abductions that occur as one surreal day unfolds.
A young girl living in the French countryside suffers constant indignities at the hand of alcoholism and her fellow man.
A mother struggles with worsening bipolar disorder and the effects that managing her illness has on her family. The PBS Great Performances recording of the West End transfer to Wyndham's Theatre (from The Donmar Warehouse) in 2024.
Desperate to escape his mind-numbing routine, uptown Manhattan office worker Paul Hackett ventures downtown for a hookup with a mystery woman.
Mahmoud, who suffers from a lot of financial difficulties, is now thinking of committing suicide
The lives of several individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts which society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
A street-wise kid, Mark Sway, sees the suicide of Jerome Clifford, a prominent Louisiana lawyer, whose current client is Barry 'The Blade' Muldano, a Mafia hit-man. Before Jerome shoots himself, he tells Mark where the body of a Senator is buried. Clifford shoots himself and Mark is found at the scene, and both the FBI and the Mafia quickly realize that Mark probably knows more than he says.
Dr. Lauffen
Zia, distraught over breaking up with his girlfriend, decides to end it all. Unfortunately, he discovers that there is no real ending, only a run-down afterlife that is strikingly similar to his old one, just a bit worse. Discovering that his ex-girlfriend has also "offed" herself, he sets out on a road trip to find her.
A weekend at a cottage takes a turn for the worst for a group of aspiring actors when one of them finds out they've booked a blockbuster role, and the rest of the group's jealously takes hold where there's no one else around.