The soothing pace of the film shows a woman's journey to reinvent herself, as Anna serves 15 years for a murder she committed as a teenager, and although her sentence has expired, the strange looks around her mean that her trial is not yet over. Anna travels far from home to a small town and finds a job, ready to start a new life, but she still struggles with closure, fear, prejudice, and the black holes left by the old days that she must fill herself.

Wondering what has happened to herself, now feeling stagnant and in a rut, Shirley Valentine finds herself regularly talking to the wall while preparing her husband's chips and egg. When her best friend wins a trip-for-two to Greece Shirley begins to see the world, and herself, in a different light.

After leaving his wife and his job to find happiness, Anders begins a clumsy, heartbreaking quest to reassemble the pieces of his fractured life.

A husband has to cope with his wife being comatose after an accident.