An intimate family portrait of four hapless but resilient women and the bittersweet lessons they learn in keeping up with the hectic demands of their individual neuroses. Each of the women seeks redemption in her own haphazard way, but whatever salvation they find is illusory and short-lived.
One day at work, unsuccessful puppeteer Craig finds a portal into the head of actor John Malkovich. The portal soon becomes a passion for anybody who enters its mad and controlling world of overtaking another human body.
Inexperienced in love and living in Los Angeles, aspiring actress Claire longs to find that special someone. Unfortunately, she couldn't pick a more undeserving guy when she starts a relationship with womanizer Chad. Although her friend April warns her about him, it's not as if April doesn't have problems of her own -- namely a chronic inability to stay faithful to her longtime boyfriend, Neal.
Nora, a single mother raising two teenage daughters, Shade and Trudi, waits tables at a truck-stop diner in a small New Mexico town. The beautiful and rebellious Trudi drops out of school and gets a job alongside Nora, while the younger Shade whittles away her time at Spanish movie matinees. Their lives are turned upside down when Trudi becomes pregnant and the girls' absent father returns.
