These slightly weary-looking soldiers, just back from South Africa, were perhaps only temporarily housed in their Cork barracks before a well-earned return home. Despite Irish misgivings, some 30,000 Irish soldiers fought in the Boer War. In a neat lesson in colonial history, the barracks were named after Queen Victoria in 1849 and rapidly re-named 'Collins Barracks' after Irish independence.

Horticulture professor Happy arrives in Shanghai and the other Happy along with husband Guddu also lands up in the Chinese city at the same time. Gangsters who’ve come to kidnap Happy and her husband, pick up the wrong Happy, while Guddu and his wife Happy are escorted to a university to deliver a lecture.

Lola is a striking teenaged girl who is on the cusp of adulthood and longs to rush into the adult world of independence, freedom and sexual exploits, but is tenaciously held back by her mother.

In 1980s Italy, a relationship begins between seventeen-year-old teenage Elio and the older adult man hired as his father's research assistant.

A strait-laced French student moves into an apartment in Barcelona with a cast of six other characters from all over Europe. Together, they speak the international language of love and friendship.