After the father's death, a man gets on a train and stops in a country town. He takes a room in a boarding house run by a mother and her daughter, a sixteen year old girl. The girl seduces the man and the man rapes her. The man pays for his stay, waits for the mother to walk away and in order to avoid any possible official complaint, induces the girl to kill herself. He leaves the town and escapes.

Dumped by his girlfriend and finding himself stranded on different couches at friends’ places, Guido tries to transform his drift into an opportunity for a new beginning.

The Boyajian family learned of 18-year-old John's death in the Persian Gulf War on Christmas Eve eleven years earlier and have not celebrated Christmas since. They have been so consumed by his death that they have forgotten the joys of the holidays, until a mysterious visitor enters their lives and rekindles the spirit of the season.

It's winter in a small Scottish village near the sea, and multiple lives intersect in a day. Frances has just lost her husband to an early death, so her mother, Elspeth, travels to Frances' house to reconnect with her daughter and grandson, Alex. Meanwhile, old women Chloe and Lily go to a funeral, youngsters Sam and Tom cut class, and Alex gets a crush on tomboy Nita.