A day in the life of an ordinary family is complicated by secret thoughts and feelings as everyone occupies themselves with the task of watching the others.

A mother struggles to provide her daughter with comfort in an unstable home as her husband constantly searches for new employment.

When a woman finds her purse stolen, she retraces the steps of her eventful day only to realize that the encounters, and her life as a whole, are empty and purposeless.

When a young boy witnesses an odd event from the window of his small-town house, he begins to doubt the stability of the world around him.

In a small town, a resident watches as the people and place change. He recounts eight seemingly disparate stories, but the town connects them all.

A young contemporary couple housesitting in St. Martin, France, playact at homeownership and encounter the romantic misfortunes of a life of mild poverty and artistic creation.

A starving man wandering the countryside finds solace in a young woman's cottage where she offers him food and rest. But when the young woman starts to behave as if the man is a threat, he must decide whether or not to live up to her fears.

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.

When an old woman sees her son straining to leave to see the world, she remembers her husband doing the same many years earlier. In a fierce battle pitting love against discovery and adventure, she does her utmost to set him free.

In a small rural town in the 1930s, three friends — a farmer’s wife, a music teacher and adulteress, and a single huntswoman — drift away from one another as they grow older, choosing unexpected futures for themselves.