Sael Farás takes advantage of his position as Mexican Ambassador in South Africa to smuggle diamonds. He also has a secret affaire with a dominatrix. When Sael suddenly dies, a detective is assigned to the case.

After ending a six year relationship, a well-behaved, Jewish, OBGYN decides to turn her brain off and her body on by exploring BDSM; instances of which are popping up in the most unusual places.

Nick Broomfield and a documentary crew visit Pandora's Box, an up-scale house of bondage on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, where clients pay $175 an hour to be subservient to mistresses. Mistresses talk about their craft; a few clients, usually masked, are interviewed as well. Then, the camera watches sessions organized around fetishes: rubber, wrestling, corporal punishment, masochism, and infantilism. Mistress Raven, the owner of Pandora's Box, explains that pain need not be part of the subservient experience: it is, at its root, a transfer of power. After their session has ended, clients talk about how drained, relaxed, relieved, and at peace they are.

To get over a breakup with his actress girlfriend, a playwright goes on holiday to a lakeside resort, where he meets a strangely mismatched couple, a man and his much younger wife. He and the wife begin an affair, during which she introduces him to some of the darker aspects of romance.