Elizabeth oli älykäs, hienostunut ja järjestelmällinen nainen tavatessaan Johnin. Miehen arvoituksellinen ja etäinen persoonallisuus kiehtoo Elizabethiä ja hän tempautuu aistilliseen suhteeseen, joka voimistuu eroottiseksi, mielikuvituksen ja dominoinnin täyteiseksi painajaiseksi. Pian Elizabethin on valittava intohimon ja mielenterveytensä välillä.

Art Dodge is a painter-turned-gallerist drowning in debt. He gets in over his head when a con job leads to an engagement with a rich divorcee. He gets in deeper when he falls for her sister, and invents a twin brother to be her beau; and deeper still when his fiancée's ex-husband comes looking for revenge.

A Baltimore teenager who picks up a second-hand camera starts snapping his way to stardom, soon turning into a nationwide sensation, with a fateful choice between his life and his art.

Sophie, a quiet and shy maid working for an upper-class French family, finds a friend in the energetic and uncompromising postmaster Jeanne, who encourages her to stand up against her bourgeois employers.

Margaret (Lena Headey) is a shy, pale, middle-class Englishwoman who is reluctantly engaged to her older, twittish neighbor Syl Monro (David Threlfall). Both bride- and groom-to-be still live with their mothers in the humdrum suburb of Croydon. However Margaret has been acting strangely ever since a vacation in Egypt, where she stayed with her mother's friend Marie-Claire (Catherine Schell). She secretly despises Syl, but does not resist when her mother Monica (Julie Walters), who has repressed the failure of her own matrimony, insists on marriage for the sake of social convention.

Louise, who has just written a novel, comes to Paris to meet with a potential publisher. While in the city, she stays with her older sister, Martine, who in many ways is the exact opposite of Louise: she lives in a fashionable neighborhood, is cold to others, and has snobby friends, while Louise lives in a small town and is thoroughly unpretentious. Louise's apparent happiness -- and similarities to their mother -- gradually gets on Martine's nerves.

A painter in the throes of a creative block finds inspiration thanks to a fascinating and mysterious gallery owner, but he can't expect the shocking consequences of their encounter.