With his gangster boss on trial for murder, a mob thug known as "the Teacher" tells Annie Laird she must talk her fellow jurors into a not-guilty verdict, implying that he'll kill her son Oliver if she fails. She manages to do this, but, when it becomes clear that the mobsters might want to silence her for good, she sends Oliver abroad and tries to gather evidence of the plot against her, setting up a final showdown.
Set in puritanical Boston in the mid 1600s, the story of seamstress Hester Prynne, who is outcast after she becomes pregnant by a respected reverend. She refuses to divulge the name of the father, is "convicted" of adultery and forced to wear a scarlet "A" until an Indian attack unites the Puritans and leads to a reevaluation of their laws and morals.
Dean is a maverick American film director surprised that his most recent film has been chosen as the Official U.S. Entry at the Venice Film Festival. A beautiful French journalist arrives at the festival with the apparent intention of interviewing the unique and eccentric filmmaker. In the midst of all the festival madness, she is forced to confront the wide divergence between things as they really are and things as they seem to be - both on screen and off. And so, finally, are we. Shot half in Venice, Italy and half in Venice, California, "Venice/Venice" looks at the profound effect movies have had - and continue to have - on our lives, our loves and on our dreams of romance.
A woman is delighted to have given birth to a baby girl but her life is turned into a nightmare when she goes missing. The police mount a frantic search but to the woman's horror she finds out that it's herself who is the main suspect.
A young woman tries to leave her troubled past behind. She meets her old flame by accident and they fall in love again, but this obsessive relationship threatens to consume them.
A recent widow invites her husband's troubled best friend to live with her and her two children. As he gradually turns his life around, he helps the family cope and confront their loss.
A lonely telephone operator leading an empty, amoral life finds God — only to have her faith continually tested in ways beyond what she could have imagined.
Just Like That: A receptionist in a large firm cheats on her voyeuristic lover with a delivery boy who has a crush on her. Another Woman's Lipstick: A young wife discovers lipstick on her husband's collar. She follows him, meets his mistress, and has a lesbian fling with her. Talk To Me, Baby: A man caught cheating in a bar by his wife admits his past dalliances on the drive home, which gets his wife aroused.
A cab ride with a dangerously seductive stranger ignites a steamy, purely sexual affair for a woman torn between her hunger for lust and her passion for love. An adventurous married woman becomes enticed by an anonymous office worker in the building next door, playing a tantalizing game of daring all by baring all. And when a beautiful female cop gets shunned by the man she desires, she arrests him, handcuffs him and makes him a slave to her passions in payment for his crime in this Red Shoe Diaries collection from master sensualist Zalman King.