In 16th century Japan, peasants Genjuro and Tobei sell their earthenware pots to a group of soldiers in a nearby village, in defiance of a local sage's warning against seeking to profit from warfare.
After breaking up with her fiancé, a gym teacher returns to work at a women's college, but a legal loophole allows him to enroll as one of her students.
In Nebraska, in pioneer days, a woman who knows she is going to die asks a prostitute to replace her with her husband and four children in order to make it possible for them to keep their family farm.
Spanish coquette Tula Moliana finds herself encumbered with two husbands, and to get a divorce from the first, Senator Wakefield, she engages Jim Blake, the fiancé of Helen, the senator's daughter, to be her correspondent.
In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.
Two melancholic Hong Kong policemen fall in love: one with a mysterious underworld figure, the other with a beautiful and ethereal server at a late-night restaurant.
"Men on the edge of a nervous breakdown" - Vincenzo, Gianni, Nicola and Pino are four friends who for years have been seeing every Monday to play poker.
A fearless, globe-trotting, terrorist-battling secret agent has his life turned upside down when he discovers his wife might be having an affair with a used car salesman while terrorists smuggle nuclear war heads into the United States.
Vijay becomes the guardian of his sister's three orphaned kids. Later, the children give shelter to Vaijayanthi, a girl trying to escape an arranged marriage, without their uncle's knowledge.