The arrival of a newborn girl causes the gradual disintegration of the Cairn family; particularly for 9-year-old Joshua, an eccentric boy whose proper upbringing and refined tastes both take a sinister turn.
An endearing light comedy about a woman who spontaneously becomes a resident of Venice after her family left her behind. While enjoying the wonderful people she meets she achieves a new life and the first time independent of her family.
A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity.
With the death of her mother, eight-year-old Anna ends her childhood: From now on, she has to look after the nine-member family. Deprivation-rich years, which also find no end when Anna marries: Her husband Albert must be a soldier in the Second World War, and the pregnant Anna has to work hard in the farm and care sick relatives. Lonely and exposed to the harassment of the tyrannical mother-in-law, she waits for Albert, with no certainty that he will ever return.
A cat burglar is forced to take a bickering, dysfunctional family hostage on Christmas Eve.
After a rough divorce, Frances, a 35-year-old professor and writer from San Francisco takes a tour of Tuscany at the urgings of her friends. On a whim she buys Bramasole, a run down villa in the Tuscan countryside and begins to piece her life together starting with the villa and finds that life sometimes has unexpected ways of giving her everything she wanted.
After her husband leaves her, a woman travels to London for the funeral of the pop star, Victor Fox, she's adored all her life. There, she meets the lover of the dead pop star, and convinces him to come back to Chicago with her to figure out who killed the singer.
In their finely appointed Connecticut home, Agnes and Tobias have grown used to the imperfection and fragility of their marriage. Quietly nursing their grief over the death of their son, they get by well enough together. Agnes' boozy sister wanders in and out, and they allow anxiety-stricken friends to move into an upstairs room. But, when their daughter, Julia, shows up announcing her fourth divorce, long-repressed emotions come to the surface.
Former burlesque star May and her daughter Peggy dance in the chorus. When May has a fight with featured dancer Bubbles, Bubbles leaves the show and Peggy takes her place. When Peggy falls in love with wealthy Randy, May fears class differences may lead to misery.
Longtime friends become feuding mothers-in-law when their children marry.
Louise, an unfulfilled divorced woman with regrets, gets the chance to relive her past when she meets a young man who bears an uncanny resemblance, in name and appearance, to her high school sweetheart who died many years before.
Following the unexplained suicide of his wife Liza, website designer Wilson Joel turns to huffing gasoline fumes and remote control gaming while avoiding an inevitable conflict with his mother-in-law.
A celebrity psychiatrist struggles to find a date for a wedding. Her dearest ex is getting married and she needs to find someone fancy enough to hide the fact that she is lonely, drinks too much and is pretty fucked up in any imaginable way.
Ellen McNulty leaves her New Jersey hamburger stand and heads west to pay a surprise visit to her son and his new bride. When Ellen arrives, her daughter-in-law mistakes her for the maid she has hired for a big party they are throwing. Rather than cause any embarrassment, Ellen goes along with the charade, which leads to many complications.
When Ethan arrives at the airport just in time to declare his undying love for his girlfriend, love appears to have conquered all. The scene, however, is really the ending of Ethan's novel, which his agent calls "unrealistic." Ethan soon meets a waitress, Jesse, and falls in love with her despite her growing devotion to Troy, a charming businessman. But the line between reality and fiction becomes increasingly blurred.
A ring passes between a lot of different people, giving the bearer or someone close a new meaning to life. Actors, embezzlers, old ladies and cheated husbands all seem to gain temporary hope from misery and disillusionment.
Julia and William were married and soon separated by his snobbish family. They meet again many years later, when their daughter he has raised invites her mother to her wedding, with the disapproval of William's mother.
In the summer of 2012 in a small town in the south of China, divorced shopkeeper Peng Yun makes the acquaintance of Ji Qing Qing who sells meat skewers from her rickshaw.
When Michèle, the CEO of a gaming software company, is attacked in her home by an unknown assailant, she refuses to let it alter her precisely ordered life. She manages crises involving family, all the while becoming engaged in a game of cat and mouse with her stalker.
The divorced Zeenat gets involved with Medhat in a forbidden relationship and then he abandons her. Sayed refuses to marry her even though she is pregnant. Sayed exploits student Hassan's need for money and agrees with him to marry Zeenat a marriage of convenience.