Two nine-year-old girls—rude Luise Palfy and respectful shy Lotte Körner—meet on a summer camp. Apart from their different hair-do, they look alike. They have never seen each other before, but soon find out that they are identical twins. It turns out that their parents divorced, each keeping one of the girls. They decide to trade places at the end of the summer. Lottie curls her hair, Lisa braids hers, and both go off to where they have never been before. The adventure begins.

Herbert lives a rather simple life, left to his own devices. He works as a projectionist in a shabby Viennese movie theater and lives alone with his red nameless cat in the free caretaker's apartment of a somewhat run-down apartment building. Now and then he visits his mother in a nursing home, meets with an old friend of his father, or comes to meetings of a savings club. Saving money is pretty much the center of his life because he has a dream. He wants to emigrate to the U.S. to buy his own movie theater and to reunite with his long-lost father. But when Rita, a young student, moves into the apartment building things in his life are changed completely.

The Detour is about a young woman travelling through Europe in search of herself and the truth of life. It is based on meetings between goatherd Joanna and Austrian author and playwright Thomas Bernhard. Joanna is lost after her boyfriend dumps her at a Women's Relief Centre in Rotterdam. She works in a library and visits the theatre, where she first sees a play by Thomas Bernhard. Bernhard's philosophy permeates Joanna's thoughts. When Camille invites her to visit the French Pyrenees, she accepts. On the way, she decides to visit Bernhard in Austria. She attempts to start a relationship with him and thereby finds herself.