Grace Bennett is a Texas high-school student who works as a waitress with her best friend Emma Perkins to earn money for a trip to Paris after graduation. Grace's stepfather pays for her stepsister Meg Kelly to come with them on the trip. Emma goes to Paris despite her boyfriend Owen's proposal of marriage. After being left behind by their tour guide, the three girls seek refuge from the Paris rain in a posh hotel. There, the hotel staff and paparazzi mistake Grace for celebutante British heiress Cordelia Winthrop-Scott, Grace's double, who leaves rather than stay to attend an auction for a Romanian charity for which she is to donate an expensive Bulgari necklace. The Americans spend the night in Cordelia's suite, and the next day fly to Monte Carlo with Cordelia's luggage.
In "the not-too-distant future", eugenics is common. A genetic registry database uses biometrics to classify those so created as "valids" while those conceived by traditional means and more susceptible to genetic disorders are known as "in-valids". Genetic discrimination is illegal, but in practice genotype profiling is used to identify valids to qualify for professional employment while in-valids are relegated to menial jobs.
While driving at night along the northern California coast, architect Dan Merrick (Tom Berenger) and wife Judith (Greta Scacchi) are involved in a violent car wreck. Dan suffers major injuries and significant brain trauma, resulting in psychogenic amnesia. After extensive plastic surgery, Dan returns home in Judith's care.
Mourad Ben Saoud, franco-algérien, se fait passer pendant de nombreuses années pour « Dino Fabrizzi », un italien qui travaille à Nice dans une concession Maserati. Son supérieur, Charles, décide de prendre sa retraite et doit choisir un successeur entre Mourad et Cyril, un raciste incompétent. Mourad a également une fiancée, Hélène, qui gère un magasin de robes de mariées. Il fait croire à tout le monde que sa famille vit en Italie alors qu'en réalité, ses parents, sa sœur et son frère résident près de Marseille.
In flashbacks, Connie Doyle's (Ricki Lake) early life gives an idea of her mindset. At 18, she meets womanizer Steve DeCunzo (Loren Dean), moves in with him and winds up pregnant. He kicks her out, denying responsibility. A destitute Connie, trying to find a shelter, gets inadvertently swept aboard a train at Grand Central Terminal. With no ticket and no money, Connie is rescued by Hugh Winterbourne (Brendan Fraser) and taken to his private compartment. She meets his wife, Patricia, who is also pregnant. When the train crashes, Connie is mistaken for Patricia because she is wearing Patricia's wedding band, which has the couple's names engraved on the inside. In the hospital, no longer pregnant, she learns Patricia and Hugh both died in the crash.
A successful Paris lawyer with a seemingly perfect life discovers that his wife is having an affair and accidentally kills her lover in a moment of madness. He escapes the law by faking his own death, assuming his victim's identity, and making a fresh start on the Adriatic coast as a photographer. This eventually leads him to realise what was missing in his life before: he finally sees the big picture.
Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a wealthy tobacco plantation owner on Réunion island in the Indian Ocean, is awaiting the arrival of his bride to be, Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve), whom he's never met. They became acquainted through the personals column of a French newspaper and have been corresponding by mail. At the Hotel Mascarin he meets his partner Jardine who accompanies him to pick up the ring. Louis drives to the dock to greet Julie who is arriving on the steamer Mississipi (spelled with one p according to the French spelling of the river at the time)from Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia. When they meet he is surprised by her beauty and does not recognize her; she is not the woman in the photo she'd sent him. She explains that she sent the photo of a neighbor to assure the sincerity of his intentions. He confesses that he too has not told the complete truth, having hidden the fact that he was wealthy.
Rodolphe Rassendyll, un touriste anglais, arrive à Strelsau, capitale d'un pays imaginaire d'Europe Centrale, la Ruritanie. Il y rencontre un lointain cousin dont il est le parfait sosie, le prince héritier Rodolphe V. Celui-ci doit être couronné Roi le lendemain, mais à l'issue de la soirée que les deux parents éloignés passent ensemble, le futur souverain ne peut être ranimé : il a bu un vin drogué par une complice de son demi-frère, Michael de Strelsau, lequel escompte se proclamer Régent du Royaume, en l'absence à la Cérémonie du Couronnement de Rodolphe V, puis faire assassiner ce dernier pour accéder ainsi au Trône. Mais deux fidèles du prince légitime, le Colonel Zapt et Fritz von Tarlenheim, font accepter par Rassendyll qu'il joue le rôle de souverain au couronnement, grâce à cette providentielle ressemblance. Les choses se compliquent lorsque Rodolphe V, toujours endormi, est enlevé le même jour par le mercenaire Rupert de Hentzau ; en outre, Rassendyll tombe amoureux de la Princesse Flavia, promise en mariage au prince héritier.
As a relative newcomer to an Oregon town that bears his name, Dr. Mumford (Loren Dean) seems charming and skillful to his neighbors and patients. His unique, frank approach to psychotherapy soon attracts patients away from the two therapists (David Paymer and Jane Adams) already working in the area.
Alex, trentenaire, donne des cours d'informatique à Pierre, septuagénaire, qui décide alors de s'inscrire sur un site de rencontre... mais avec la photo de son jeune professeur...
Following a car accident, in which he believes he killed a boy, Arthur Seligman (José Garcia) falls into a coma for several hours. While in the coma, he pronounces incoherent sentences. At his awakening, he does not remember what happened before the crash, and he does not know the meaning of the words he pronounced while unconscious. The nurse who assisted him, Isabelle Kruger (Marion Cotillard), recorded them in a notebook, which she gives to him. Arthur then tries to understand what happened, what those sentences mean, and begins to lose his grasp of reality.
It is based on an unpublished novel, Ice Ages, by German author Hannelore Hippe. (It has since been published.) She was inspired by reports in the late 1980s of the discovery of the half-burned body of a young woman near Bergen, and there was speculation as to her identity. This was just before the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification of Germany.
Loosely based on true events (see Bernard Boursicot and Shi Pei Pu), the film concerns René Gallimard (Jeremy Irons), a French diplomat assigned to Beijing, China in the 1960s. He becomes infatuated with a Chinese opera performer, Song Liling (John Lone), who spies on him for the Government of the People's Republic of China.
David Locke (Jack Nicholson) is a television journalist making a documentary film on post-colonial Africa. To finish the film, he is in the Sahara desert seeking to meet with and interview rebel fighters involved in Chad's civil war. Struggling to find rebels to interview, he is frustrated when his Land Rover gets hopelessly stuck on a sand dune. After a long walk through the desert back to his hotel, a thoroughly glum Locke learns that an Englishman, Robertson (Charles Mulvehill), who has also been staying there and with whom he had struck up a friendship, has died overnight at the hotel.