Ramses is a "life organs" smugler and a millionaire. He wishes to have the tower of Babel rebuilt and hires a detective to find the architect who disappeared with the original plans.
A young architect has a double life: he has a beautiful wife and a sexy mistress. His friends advise him to choose one, but this three women gives meaning to his life, including his nosy mother-in-law.
Naples, 1959. Pure Mathematics professor Renato Caccioppoli, Bakunin's grandson, is a tortured soul. Recently discharged from the psychiatric hospital, left by his wife, and increasingly disillusioned with academia and the Communist Party, he lives his last days with painful detachment.
A poor French teenage girl engages in an illicit affair with a wealthy Chinese heir in 1920s Saigon. For the first time in her young life she has control, and she wields it deftly over her besotted lover throughout a series of clandestine meetings and torrid encounters.