Rodrigo Garcia writes and directs this emotional drama telling the interconnected stories of three women: a middle-aged mother, the daughter she gave up for adoption 35 years ago, and a young woman seeking to adopt a child of her own. Annette Bening plays Karen, a single woman of 50 who gave up her baby daughter for adoption when she was only 14 years old. Naomi Watts plays Elizabeth, Karen's daughter, now a lawyer in her mid-thirties who experiences a crisis of identity when she falls in love with her recently-bereaved boss, Paul (Samuel L. Jackson). In the third plot-line, Lucy (Kerry Washington), a young African-American woman, sets out to adopt when she discovers that she is unable to conceive.