Daily life in a third-class Transsiberian wagon named Vostok N 20. Between discomfort, shared meals, boredom and confessions to strangers, people spend their time as they can. In the form of literary counterpoint, poems of Marina Tsvétaeva told by Fanny Ardant illuminates the feelings of passengers: their loneliness, their desires for freedom and love.
After the suicide of his actress-mother, a young man announces his identity to his father, who happens to be the man who directed his mother's last film.
Made of four short tales, linked by a story filmed by Wim Wenders. Taking place in Ferrara, Portofino, Aix en Provence and Paris, each story, which always a woman as the crux of the story, invites to an inner travel, as Antonioni says "towards the true image of that absolute and mysterious reality that nobody will ever see".
Madame Jouve, the narrator, tells the tragedy of Bernard and Mathilde. Bernard was living happily with his wife Arlette and his son Thomas. One day, a couple, Philippe and Mathilde Bauchard, moves into the next house. This is the accidental reunion of Bernard and Mathilde, who had a passionate love affair years ago. The relationship revives... A somber study of human feelings.
In a particularly hot summer, Sister Consuelo, superior of an order dedicated to caring for the sick, decided to transform the dilapidated hospital into a modern nursing.
Bright days ahead? Caroline has retired, at last. A new life lies before her: time to take care of her children, her husband, and, most of all, herself. However, she soon comes to realize that this new freedom is synonymous with boredom and idleness. Especially when she receives a membership to her neighborhood’s senior club as a birthday present… Reluctant at first, she nevertheless decides to take the plunge. Oddly enough, she meets great people there, starting with the young computer science teacher, who is far from insensitive to her charms. Caroline gradually takes control of her life again and lives a second youth: taking a new lover, living new experiences, breaking the rules, not doing what’s expected of her… Who said that retirement was the beginning of the end and not a new beginning?