Bernard Bottle, a mild mannered art buyer, is fired by his greedy boss, abandoned by his girlfriend and discovers a genie in an old bottle. The genie immediately embraces the modern world and helps Bernard on the side. /// Bernard is fired from his job and his girlfriend leaves him, both on Christmas Eve. The girlfriend takes all of his possessions with her, leaving behind only an old lamp. His Christmas suddenly becomes brighter when he rubs it.
Louise Créteur's husband dies on the Titanic trying to emigrate, so she must leave their boy Lucien with her old dad in Honfleur and leave the Normandy countryside for greater Paris. She becomes a maid in the run-down Villa des Roses, a dodgy pension run by crafty retired barrister Hugh Burrell and his frivolous, posh wife Olive, an international home to has-beens and would-bes. Louside becomes the lover of German painter, but fears he's not committed and has an abortion. Fate changes, at the eve of World War I.
South African journalist Donald Woods is forced to flee the country after attempting to investigate the death in custody of his friend, the Black anti-Apartheid activist Steve Biko.
