An American recent divorcee travels to Germany using his inheritance money and falls in love with a prostitute who owns a monkey.

A hard-working Pennsylvania nurse discovers her friend and ex-lover dead in a ditch. She searches his pockets for the money she loaned him, and when she doesn't find it, she drags his dead body around town in a search for the money.

One night in the late 1960s, an American couple vacationing at a lake in Germany gets split up, filling both with dread and fear as they are pushed to their limits trying to reunite.

On the 4th of July, a small Texas diner receives new customers from all over the nation. One family arrives to the small town in search for an old war buddy, Bill, who offered the husband a job, but the townspeople insist that Bill's work is not accepting any new workers.

At a North American winter resort, an arthritic old man challenges a pair of young men to a series of physical challenges to prove that, despite his age and illness, he is still strong.

On a trip through Europe, an old man grapples with his terminal illness and finds himself increasingly disappointed by his current lover and missing his old flame.

Dan and Nancy spend the summer in a remote town Northern California to rekindle their marriage after they discover each other's infidelity, but below the surface, they both know their efforts are in vain.

On a vacation to the mountains of Colorado, a young boy tries to have fun climbing with his sister but instead learns of the growing rift of discontentment between his parents.

When a young boy visits the family farm on the prairie, he dreams that he is becoming a man, but a fierce storm and an untimely lightning strike humble and frighten him.

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.