In a coffee shop in a tight-knit Oregon community a local professor and writer Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman) witnesses love whipping up mischief among the town's residents. Harry watches in awe as love mystifies, wounds, devastates, inspires, makes unreasonable demands and profoundly shapes the lives of everyone around him - including himself.

From the die-hard romantic coffee shop owner Bradley (Greg Kinnear) who has a serial habit of looking for love in all the wrong places, including with his current wife Kathyrn (Selma Blair); to the edgy real estate agent Diana (Radha Mitchell) who is caught up in an affair with a married man (Billy Burke) with whom she shares an ineffable connection; to the beautiful young newcomer Chloe (Alexa Davalos) who defies fate in romancing the troubled Oscar (Toby Hemingway); to Harry himself, whose adoring wife (Jane Alexander) is looking to break through his wall of grief after the wrenching loss of a loved one . . .

All of these strands intertwine into one epic love story in which no one can escape being bent, befuddled, delighted and ultimately redeemed by love's inescapable spell.