Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.

James has a good job, a good home, a good wife, but it isn't enough. Ali is single, single-minded, singularly focused on James. They meet in the same room, in the same hotel. Mariella watches them - unknown, unseen, unheard. She's the hotel cleaner who deals with the debris, the aftermath of their passion. She dreams of a similar life. This has been the pattern for some time, but Ali wants more. James can't give it. He wants to keep it as it is. It starts to play with Ali's head. She schemes and dreams and fantasises. Things start to unravel, but Mariella is used to cleaning up mess. She is thorough; methodical, meticulous.

When Georgiana Summers learns that the woman who stole and married her husband is planning a romantic tryst with a new love, she hatches a giddy plot to expose the rendezvous and pay her back.