奥吉（哈威·凯特尔 Harvey Keitel 饰）经营着一间雪茄店，年近四十的他依然过着形单影只的生活，只有常常光顾的潦倒作家本杰明（威廉·赫特 William Hurt 饰）能偶尔跟他聊聊天，解解闷。本杰明的生活同样不尽如人意。一场意外让本杰明遇见了名为拉希德（哈罗·佩里纽 Harold Perrineau Jr. 饰）的黑人男孩，一来二去之间，两人结下了深厚的友谊。 　　某日，奥吉的前女友卢比（斯托卡特·詹宁 Stockard Channing 饰）来到了雪茄店，两人有十八年没有见过面了。卢比告诉奥吉，他们的女儿费莉希蒂（艾什莉·贾德 Ashley Judd 饰）不仅未婚先孕，还染上了毒品，尽管奥吉和这个素未谋面的女儿之间并没有亲情可言，但他还是驱车前去探望。The plot of this movie, like smoke itself, drifts and swirls ethereally. Characters and subplots are deftly woven into a tapestry of stories and pictures which only slowly emerges to our view. This film tries to convince us that reality doesn't matter so much as aesthetic satisfaction. In Auggie's New York smoke shop, day by day passes, seemingly unchanging until he teaches us to notice the little details of life. Paul Benjamin, a disheartened and broken writer, has a brush with death that is pivotal and sets up an unlikely series of events that afford him a novel glimpse into the life on the street which he saw, but did not truly perceive, every day. Finally, it's Auggie's turn to spin a tale....