As she walks alongside the Hudson River with her friend, a woman excitedly explains her intricate vision of what would give her happiness.

Following a messy breakup, an MIT graduate and a PhD student at Indiana University separately talk about the problems in their former relationship in two spliced-together conversations, exploring conflicts surrounding language, intimacy, commitment, and intellectualism.

A man's lonely life focused on the pursuit of reason and music leaves him questioning what more there may be in the lives of other people and of religion.

In a series of commentaries on the human condition — life, truth, happiness, death — a spinster sister takes in her dead sister’s children; a man is entranced by the endless waves which roll and crash in the ocean; a carpenter wrestles with the burden of being everyone’s confidante; a dying railroad crossing watchman shares a simple but complex wisdom.

A lonely middle-aged widow goes through his daily routine in the suburbs, looking to make small talk with someone, anyone, just to have occasion to get out of his own head.

A young couple helplessly in love spend their last night together at a park before they begin college at different schools.

When a depressed middle aged man strikes up a romance with his neighbor in a modern suburban American town, he consults women's magazines to make himself into the perfect lover.

In a world where there is no smell, taste, pain, death, or digestion, the people are left hungering for one thing: love.

A man fantasizes about courting his friend's wife, despite being married himself, with increasing desire.

Following his breakup, a Japanese college student uses savings from his relationship as a means to quit his summer mowing job, but not without first helping a woman who asks, but doesn't appear to need, for her lawn to be mowed.