Emily Reed (Otis) travels to New York City for an interview with an international law firm, which immediately offers her a job on the condition that she can fly to Rio de Janeiro the following morning. Emily agrees and is introduced to Claudia Dennis (Bisset), one of the firm's top executives. They arrive in Rio to finalize the purchase of a hotel, but angry Claudia must fly to Buenos Aires, Argentina, to meet the man the hotel's owner. Claudia instructs Emily to take her date for the night. While viewing the hotel, Emily sees two locals having animalistic sex, which unnerves her and she returns to her own hotel. She meets Claudia's date; a wealthy man named James Wheeler (Rourke). They have dinner, accompanied by James' bodyguards.
Erika Kohut is a piano professor at a Vienna music conservatory. Although already in her forties, she still lives in an apartment with her domineering mother; her father is a long-standing resident in a psychiatric asylum.
Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal), the socially awkward and emotionally sensitive youngest daughter of a dysfunctional family, adjusts to normal life after having been hospitalized following an incident of dangerous self-harm. She learns to type, and begins to work as a secretary for an eccentric attorney, E. Edward Grey (James Spader), who hires her despite her stilted social skills, unprofessional appearance and her scoring higher than anyone he's ever interviewed, therefore being highly overqualified. Edward explains that it's dull work and they don't use computers; however, Lee remarks that she is okay with these conditions.
Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns to his logging home town of Lumberton, North Carolina from Oak Lake College after his father suffers a near-fatal stroke. While walking home from the hospital, he cuts through a vacant lot and discovers a severed ear. Jeffrey takes the ear to police detective John Williams (George Dickerson), through whom he reacquaints with the detective's daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). She tells him details about the ear case and a suspicious woman, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who may be connected to the case. Increasingly curious, Jeffrey enters Dorothy's apartment by posing as an exterminator, and while Dorothy is distracted by a man dressed in a yellow suit at her door (whom Jeffrey later refers to as the Yellow Man), Jeffrey steals her spare key.
Quills begins during the Reign of Terror, with the incarcerated Marquis de Sade penning a story about the libidinous Mademoiselle Renard, an aristocrat who meets the preeminent sadist in her executioner.
Elliot Slater is a young, attractive, Australian professional photographer living in Southern California. Having always been uncomfortable with his sexual proclivities, which tend toward the BDSM realm, he signs up for a dominatrix-themed vacation on a private tropical island known as "Eden" in the hopes of working through his discomfort.
The title of the film refers to the duration of a relationship between Wall Street arbitrageur John Gray (Mickey Rourke) and divorced SoHo art gallery employee Elizabeth McGraw (Kim Basinger). John initiates and controls the various experimental sexual practices of this volatile relationship to push Elizabeth's boundaries. In doing so, Elizabeth experiences a gradual downward spiral toward emotional breakdown.
A fleet of helicopters sprays for medflies, revealing all the characters along the path of their flight. Dr. Ralph Wyman and his wife, Marian, meet another couple, Stuart and Claire Kane, at Zoe Trainer's cello concert and make a spontaneous Sunday dinner date. Marian's sister Sherri is married to philandering cop Gene, who makes up unbelievable stories to hide his affair with Betty Weathers. Betty is in the process of divorcing one of the helicopter pilots, Stormy. Waitress Doreen Piggot is married to an alcoholic limo driver named Earl. TV commentator Howard Finnigan lives with his wife Anne and their young family next door to Zoe and her mother, cabaret singer Tess Trainer. Their pool cleaner is Jerry Kaiser, whose wife, Lois, works from home as a phone sex operator, tending to the children while she talks off strange men. Jerry and Lois are friends with Doreen's daughter, Honey and her husband Bill, who works as a makeup artist.
Set in contemporary New York City, Shortbus revolves around Sofia Lin (Sook-Yin Lee), who is married to the handsome but unambitious and slightly dim-witted Rob (Raphael Barker). She works as a couples counselor/sex therapist. She comes into contact with a couple: A slightly egotistical former child star Jamie (PJ DeBoy) and former prostitute James (Paul Dawson), the film's other lead character. At the outset, James suggests to his boyfriend that they open up their relationship to sex with others. During their first consultation, Sofia snaps, slaps Jamie, and then apologetically reveals her "pre-orgasmic" status. The couple suggests she attend a weekly social/artistic/sexual salon in Brooklyn called "Shortbus," which is hosted by drag performance artist Justin Bond (playing himself). Sofia slowly opens up to new experiences; this includes a friendship with a dominatrix who goes by the name Severin (Lindsay Beamish). Sofia's inability to achieve orgasm begins to cause conflict with Rob, who in turn begins attending Shortbus with Sofia.
In 1952, Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Casey Affleck) is a pillar of the community in his small west Texas town — patient, dependable, and well-liked. Beneath his pleasant facade, however, he is a sociopath with violent sexual tastes. As a teenager, Lou was caught raping a five-year-old girl in the back of a parked car by his adopted brother Mike, who pleaded guilty to the crime and served prison time to protect Lou. After being released, Mike was hired by the construction firm of Chester Conway (Ned Beatty). Mike died on the job after slipping and falling off a beam through several floors in a building under construction. Lou believes that Conway planned the accident.
Ricky, a 23-year-old psychiatric patient, has been deemed cured and is released from a mental institution. Until then he has been the lover of the woman director of the hospital. An orphan, free, and alone, his goal is to have a normal life with Marina Ozores, an actress, former porn star, and recovering drug addict, whom he once slept with during an escape from the asylum.
Max Renn (Woods) is the president of CIVIC-TV, a UHF television station in Toronto that specializes in sensationalistic programming. Displeased with his station's current lineup, Max is looking for something that will break through to a new audience. One morning, he is summoned to the clandestine office of Harlan (Peter Dvorsky), who operates CIVIC-TV's pirate satellite dish which can intercept international broadcasts. Harlan shows him Videodrome, a plotless show apparently being broadcast out of Malaysia which depicts the brutal torture and murder of anonymous victims in a reddish-orange chamber. Believing this to be the future of television (seemingly staged snuff TV), Max orders Harlan to begin pirating the program.
In a small town in France, in early 1940, before the German invasion of the country, Armand, messenger of a pharmacy owned by Eliane Michoud, unhappily married, began to undermine her and she, after having initially rejected, join the affair.
British couple, Nigel (Hugh Grant) and Fiona Dobson (Kristin Scott Thomas), are on a Mediterranean cruise ship to Istanbul en route to India. They encounter a beautiful French woman, Mimi (Emmanuelle Seigner), and that night Nigel meets her while dancing alone in the ship's bar. Later Nigel meets her much older and crippled American husband Oscar (Peter Coyote), who is acerbic and cynical, having been jaded and a failure as a writer.
In 1944 in the Republic of Salò, the Fascist-occupied portion of Italy, four wealthy men of power, the Duke, the Bishop, the Magistrate, and the President, agree to marry each other's daughters as the first step in a debauched ritual. They recruit four teenage boys to act as guards and four young soldiers (called "studs", "cockmongers", or "fuckers"), who are chosen because of their big penises. They then kidnap nine young men and nine young women and take them to a palace near Salò. Accompanying them are four middle-aged prostitutes, also collaborators, who recount arousing stories for the men, who sadistically exploit their victims.