Not long after they cross paths at an art gallery, architect Ray Reardon and hypnotically sensual Lena are married with children. But as strange incidents occur, Ray begins to realize he may not really know the woman he married.
Stourley Kracklite, a driven, detail-obsessed architect, travels from America to Rome with his much younger wife, Louisa, to oversee an architectural homage to a personal hero, 18th-century master builder Etienne-Louis Boullée. En route by train, Stourley and Louisa conceive a much-wanted child — but Stourley's obsession with his wife's expanding belly, her perceived infidelity, and his own recurrent bouts of abdominal pain reach epic and dangerous proportions.
A successful and married black man contemplates having an affair with a white girl from work. He's quite rightly worried that the racial difference would make an already taboo relationship even worse.
While waiting for the brain surgery of his daughter Angela, victim of a motorcycle accident, the surgeon Timoteo recalls his torrid affair with and passion for Italia, a simple woman from slums in the periphery of the big city where he lives. The ghost of the beloved and sexual object of desire Italia chases him in his memories.
When a young man learns that his overbearing father is having an affair, he tries to stop it, only to be seduced by the older woman as well.
In an industrializing Italian town, a married woman, rendered mentally unstable after a traffic accident, drifts into an affair with a friend of her husband.
An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.
Two neighbours — a persecuted journalist and a resigned housewife — forge a strong bond on the day of Adolf Hitler's historic 1938 visit to Rome.
A New York suburban couple's marriage goes dangerously awry when the wife indulges in an adulterous fling.
Gino, a drifter, begins an affair with inn-owner Giovanna as they plan to get rid of her older husband.
In 1950s Sicily, con artist Joe Moretti does screen tests for the big studios, accepting money or favours for his efforts. A young illiterate novitiate named Beata desperately wants to change her life and falls for him; belatedly, he realizes his feelings for her. However, their love affair is doomed when he's arrested.
At a college in Rome, a professor, nicknamed "Dodo" is in a deep depression. His stunningly beautiful wife has just left him for another man. Dodo wants her back very badly and has erotic daydreams about her. A beautiful young student in his class asks him for a ride home and seduces the lucky man, but still he wonders about his wife and her lover.
A grandmother has a passionate affair with a man half her age, who is also sleeping with her daughter.
In 1940s Venice, after twenty years' marriage, retired art critic Nino Rolfe and his younger wife Teresa feel their passion waning. To help her shed her inhibitions and rekindle their relationship, the professor records his sexual fantasies in a diary.
A well-to-do husband who allows his wife to have affairs in order to avoid a divorce becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance of her lovers.
While trying to raise money to prevent his car from being repossessed, George is attracted to Lola, a Frenchwoman who works in a "model shop", an establishment that rents out beautiful pin-up models to photographers. George spends his last twelve dollars to photograph Lola, and discovers that she is as unhappy as he.
Clelia, a self-made woman coming from humble means, travels back to Turin, her hometown, to scout locations for the successful Roman atelier she works for. At the hotel, she encounters some upper middle-class women and she finds herself drawn into their friendships.
After his young lover, Gitone, leaves him for another man, Encolpio decides to kill himself, but a sudden earthquake destroys his home before he has a chance to do so. Now wandering around Rome in the time of Nero, Encolpio encounters one bizarre and surreal scene after another.
A recently widowed American begins an anonymous sexual relationship with a young Parisian woman.
A failed novelist's inability to pay the bills strains relations with his wife and leads him to work at an escort service, where he becomes entwined with a wealthy woman whose husband is a successful writer.
