"Zazel" is the title character, a world-famous artist commissioned to create "the most arousing perfume ever". In the course of devising this scent, Zazel variously paints pictures, views photographs, and wanders among the flowers of her garden, each experience inspiring her to envision a powerful sexual fantasy. The film consists of nearly a dozen individually themed sequences which reference and recreate iconography drawn from mythology, religion, literature, film and even Jungian psychology. These include sirens, water nymphs, mermaids, flowers, the jungle, The Three Musketeers, classic old Hollywood movies, angels and demons, and the Jungian duality of male and female.
The film is about the deep love and affection between two girls, Sally and the meek and tradition-bound Nirmala. At school they were punished by their teacher Devika, so the two girls run away during a school trip as a revenge on their teacher Devika who organised the trip.
Tao is a tomboyish university student who supports her studies by writing for her uncle's racy pulp pornographic magazine Sayew, despite the fact that she has never had sex herself. The magazine is struggling financially, so Tao's uncle, Dr. Porn, tells her she needs to spice up her stories or else be sacked.
Masayo is a rebellious inmate at a female prison managed by a sadistic warden. The warden develops a special interest in Masayo and makes plans to have her subdued.
The film explores the relationship problems of two couples, Kohei and Kinuko, and Manabe and Hijiri, and the solutions they try to devise as a way out. Kohei and Kinuko, despite their age differences, seem like a happy pair, but there is an insurmountable distance between them. Kohei is married to another woman, and Kinuko, though she knows he will never divorce, can't bring herself to break off the relationship and start anew. Manabe and Hijiri, meanwhile, start off happily enough, but eventually their passion begins to wane as Manabe starts looking to other women for sex. Hijiri, feeling rejected, moves into an apartment next door to Kinuko, where she plots to break up the mismatched couple to her own advantage.
A pawn shop owner in Osaka is murdered, but due to a lack of conclusive evidence the police lists the man's death as a suicide. Detective Sasagaki, who investigated the case, can't forget the main suspect's daughter Yukiho (Maki Horikita) and the pawn shop owner's son Ryoji.