The lives of a Hassidic young man (Yoyli) and a Polish young woman (Mariola) intersect when they find themselves secluded in a car after he offers her a ride home. This, after Yoyli and his mother picked her up from a street corner in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where Polish, immigrant women wait to be taken to Hassidic homes to help with the cleaning of their house. In the movie they negotiate the labor at $8 an hour. After scrubbing and scouring for a bit, and after observing a world that is completely foreign to her, Mariola succumbs to the toxic fumes of the cleaning agents and falls and faints. After regaining consciousness, she leaves the house in an angry huff. At the prodding of his sister and father, Yoyli goes out to find her and offer her a ride. She accepts not realizing the differences of their worlds that would place the two young people in a tense and heated situation that is never fully resolved.

Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s.

It’s just another ordinary day in 1930s Los Angeles for private investigator Clyde Umney, until a new client walks into his office. Umney soon learns that his client is the crime-fiction writer who not only created him, but now needs to switch places with him.