Cyril and Fiona, a free-wheeling married couple, travel to a tropical coastal town to follow their sexual fantasies. Cyril is a manipulator. There, they meet another couple, Catherine and Hugh, and their three children. Hugh is a one-armed photographer who specializes in nude photographs of peasant women. Soon, they decide to live together and an erotic atmosphere develops between them.

Superficial people are revealed and drastically changed by circumstance or luck in this a tale of death, seduction, blackmail and theft among British and Americans in Florence in the turbulent days just before World War II.

Whilst traveling across America living off the money from a large inheritance, ex-fireman Nashe has a chance meeting with Pozzi, a professional gambler and card shark. Nashe agrees to fund the penniless Pozzi in a game of poker against two eccentric millionaires, Flower and Stone, in an attempt to regain some of his spent fortune. His gamble has unforeseen and bizarre consequences for both himself and Pozzi. This film is an almost exact translation of the novel by Paul Auster.

In Victorian England, wealthy patriarch Sir Harald Alabaster invites an impoverished biologist, William Adamson, into his home. There, William tries to continue his work, but is distracted by Alabaster's seductive daughter, Eugenia. William and Eugenia begin a torrid romance, but as the couple become closer, the young scientist begins to realize that dark, disturbing things are happening behind the closed doors of the Alabaster manor.

《康熙南巡图》，这幅著名的中国卷轴画描绘了康熙皇帝在1689年第二次访问他的南方帝国。这幅画是由王翚(1632-1717)和他的助手们创作的。霍克尼将这幅画卷更流畅的空间描绘与后来由徐阳和他的助手——乾隆皇帝南巡(1764-1770)——绘制的画卷《乾隆南巡图》进行了对比。